Far from heaven
by NaryaRingofFire
Summary: Gabriel has been living as the Trickster for a very long time trying to forget heaven and keep out its mess, when one night he run into Michael by chance. They only get a quick glimpse at each other, but now they are caught in a wave of emotions and memories long buried. Both of them have changed more than they could have imagined, but do they still have a chance to fix everything?
1. Prologue

**So, here is my first try at a longer story. While I have an idea where I´m going, I´m very interested at how I will get there and hoping my subconscious does have a masterplan. If it has, I will try to update once a week. Anyway, enjoy :)**

The Trickster loves One Night Stands. Alright, prostitutes can be fine sometimes, but having to pay them always destroys the mood, as well as knowing the whole time they are only doing this for money. With self created illusions it´s about the same thing. Yes, they can be fine and fun sometimes, but you always know they are just illusions and that really destroys the mood, because you know it´s just fancy masturbation. Real relationship on the other hand are way to messy and complicated and to be avoided at all costs.

That leaves One Night Stands. Real persons, both sides want to have sex and the chance of it evolving into a real relationship almost zero. Perfect. The only problem the Trickster has with One Night Stands is them tending to be Half Night Stands.

The woman to his side has fallen asleep already and it is only two am. He can´t remember her name, but on the other hand she has called him two different names during sex, one of them very clearly her ex, so he doesn´t exactly feel bad about it.

Following his way too explicit One Night Stand rules, he starts counting backwards from hundred to zero in Hebrew, Latin and French (messing up French again and frustrated replacing it with English) Reaching zero he looks over to the woman and finds her still asleep. So no second round, he has given her the chance. Time to go.

He swings himself out of bed, fishing for his clothes. Yes, of course he doesn´t need to do either of those things, being able to just let clothes appear on his body and move to a parallel dimension to vanish from human view, but behaving human till having left the motel is actually part of his rules. Over the years his One Night Stands have three or four times woken up while he was doing something not humanly possible and nothing destroys the memory of an evening as much as having to perform brainwashing at the end of it.

Or forgetting about it and then reading a week later about that woman claiming to have had sex with a ghost. A ghost! That was just humiliating.

He is searching for his socks, when the profound feeling of something being _wrong_ hits him like a train.

It´s like washing your hands in the bathroom, just to suddenly spot a figure in the mirror and have your head crushed into the sink, before your brain even realizes what is happening.

(Talk about regrettable life experiences)

(He was stoned)

(They were demons)

(He put them into a pocket universe, where they spent three weeks running from drunken purple dinosaurs, who spit water for some reason, unable to leave their meat suits, till he remembered them and killed them all)

(No shame in that story)

(None at all)

(At least the music had been nice)

The Trickster looks up frowning. Nothing has attacked him yet, which somehow feels… wrong. Something is there, almost sitting in his neck and it´s maddening. Screwing the no-unhuman-things-on-One-Night-Stands-Rule, he quickly checks the room. Nothing. The woman is entirely human, not possessed, nothing and no one is hidden. But for an alarm signal to be that strong it has to be close.

Screw it, a huge part of him screams. Just go and ignore it, like you always do! Go to India and get a new girl! Steal a car! No better, turn people who love their cars too much into cars! Oh, and get new chocolate bars, you are almost out of real ones and the illusions are just not the same! Just go!

He almost listens to that part of him (It makes up the majority of his thinking anyway) He almost vanishes and prevents all of the events that will come out of that one strange night from happening. But the moment he wants to disappear it suddenly hits him. The feeling isn´t strong because it is near. It is just… really fucking strong. And miles away. Something global. Something bigger than global.

Some idiot has opened up hell.

The next moment he is out of the shitty motel room, walking down the main street of somewhere-he-has-already-forgotten Wyoming, gnawing his last real chocolate bar. They air seems to be bristling with demons, but it is all very uncoordinated, none of them has yet seemed to spot that they are out of hell and able to possess people. Or the holy neon signal that is currently walking down the street eating a chocolate bar for that matter.

Just looking, he tells himself. Just keeping myself updated about heaven and hell. Why would demons attack a Trickster anyway. The more reasonable part of his mind, like so often, doesn´t even bother answering. It has probably given up and died ages ago.

The street is empty, apart from a man walking down the opposite walkway, who the Trickster has been ignoring since having made sure it´s no demon. His nervousness grows anyway, his hand tightening around his ang… that blade. Why would demons want to attack a Trickster anyway?

"Gabriel?"

At first the Trickster doesn´t react at all. It is impossible that the man means him and besides there are other people called Gabriel, so no reason to react at all. It´s simply not possible that the man does mean him.

Only…

They are alone on a forsaken road in absolutely-forgettable Wyoming at two am, with a gate of hell open nearby. No one else around. And...he, he being so occupied by looking for demons, how does he only realize that now?… the man isn´t a man at all! He is a vessel! A vessel covering himself up incredibly well, but a vessel still. Shit, shit, shit!

"Gabriel!"

No, that isn´t possible, he hasn´t met an angel for centuries and now it has to be THAT angel, this HAS to be someone tricking him for vengeance, shit, shit, shit, this…

This is just like his luck.

For one moment they are just standing there on opposite sides of the empty road, starring at each other. The road between them of course means absolutely nothing, they could reach each other in the blink of an eye, but no one dares to move.

It is unreal, absolutely unreal and all Gabriel can do is stand and stare, like a rabbit in front of a car, while being overwhelmed with a wave of images, memories and emotions and feeling that the other is also overwhelmed, unable to believe.

"Gabriel?"

That´s when he panics and zaps himself to Australia.


	2. Chapter 1

It is early evening near Adelaide. A nice and empty beach in the sunset, just a few seagulls flying around or resting peacefully on the shore. Everything is quiet and…

… a cursing archangel appears.

The seagulls aren´t impressed at all, cawing and giving their opinion very loudly and unamused as they fly away. Gabriel ignores them altogether, letting himself drop into the sand, trying to laugh away what just happened and not succeeding at all.

Thousands of years of perfecting the cover-up for his angel powers. Turning off angel radio, staying low.

Centuries of not seeing an other angel.

(Well, there was that regrettable incident with Balthazar, that kid can be rather persistent. Gabriel didn´t like to drop him into that enchanted well, which just happened to be the real deal and powerful enough to hold an angel, to safe himself escape time and he had to fake his death once again after it, just to be sure, but that was just how life went.)

And now this! And of all the angels it had to be the one he would have maybe expected the least and also wants to see the least. The one who has power over him like almost no one else. The one who almost raised him, then destroyed his world and sent him running. Good old big brother Michael. Who would have thought to see him of all people in Wyoming?

Michael has never liked to leave heaven, as far as Gabriel can remember. Even Lucifer left the garden more often, back then.

No, don´t go back there, don´t…

Damn.

" _Michael, are you coming with us?" Gabriel is absolutely excited. Father has finally allowed them to go to earth and have a look. Well, it´s not like it´s his first time on earth, he and Lucifer have sneaked out of the garden a few times before and have had a good time before getting caught, but this is his first official time and that makes it something entirely else. There is so much he has only been able to see briefly till Lucifer dragged him on, reminding him that Father would get them sooner or later, so they had to see as much as possible, no time for details._

 _Really, earth doesn´t even have that many details at this point and only a few lower species inhabiting it. It is still very much in construction state and Father is having a hard time kick-starting evolution. But still, it´s something else than the garden, something new and exciting and Lucifer, Raphael and Gabriel can´t wait for it to be shown to them. Raphael, usually the calmest of them all, has been nervous all morning, flapping his wings and fiddling, while trying to escape Lucifers attempts to tell him everything about earth._

" _Just leave me alone, Lucifer", he is protesting right now. "I want to see it for myself" "You could have long seen it for yourself", Lucifer replies, clearly itching to tell someone, anyone, about earth. "Gabriel and I offered you to come with us more than once, not our fault you are so perfect and sticking to the rules" Raphaels wings flap in anger. "I am not. I just don´t do stupid, risky stuff and openly defying Fathers orders is stupid. One day you will go to far Lucifer, and then don´t say I didn´t warn you"_

" _Well, one day maybe, but not today", Lucifer replies lighthearted and smiles at Raphael, because these days none of them ever argues for long. And Raphael smiles back, because he hasn´t really meant what he said and it isn´t his character to see black. Moments later they are happily chattering about earth in a more general way, because Lucifer so clearly wants to talk about it and Raphael thinks that maybe a bit of general knowledge can´t hurt after all._

 _Gabriel has listened to that exchange with half an ear, while dancing around Michael, willing his oldest brother to look at him. Michael is holding some script Father has given him and is actually managing to read with his brothers fussing all around him, like only an older brother, who knows that if he doesn´t adapt he will never get anything done, can do. "Michael, come on let´s go!" The oldest archangel sighs and reluctantly puts down the script to face the youngest, who is barely able to hold still for a moment._

" _Why don´t the three of you just go?", Michael says with a forced smile. "Show everything to Raphael, have a great day, maybe even get Father to explain some things to you. Meanwhile I can finally have a bit peace in the garden" Gabriel is struck. In his worldview back then, this is the absolute catastrophe._

" _But Mike", he complains, falling back to the old nickname Michael not so secretly hates. "It was supposed to be a good day, a family day. All four of us. It won´t be the same if you don´t come" "It will be great", Michael replies firmly. "I can see earth later, it will be there for quite some time and it will be better for you not to have your worried big brother hanging around, warning you about everything"_

 _M_ _ichael c_ _omes_ _with them in the end. Really, it_ _i_ _s the only way to keep Gabriel from crying_ _out_ _of disappointment, Raphael from staying in the garden out of loyalty and Lucifer from throwing a_ _major_ _tantrum. But the whole day while they fl_ _y_ _around, excited by all the different landscapes that stretch beneath them, Michael_ _is_ _strangely withdrawn, barely smiling, wanting to return to the garden almost immediately. He stay_ _s_ _with them, because he d_ _oesn_ _´t want to leave his brothers alone, but the day_ _isn´_ _t_ _remotely_ _as funn_ _y_ _as Gabriel imagined it to be and he_ _is_ _angry at Michael for days (a really long time for him back then) for ruining the mood._

 _It t_ _akes_ _him years and many disillusions about his brother to realize that Michael_ _i_ _s and ha_ _s_ _always been afraid of new things._ _If you c_ _a_ _n´t plan and foresee it, it_ _is_ _dangerous. Gabriel th_ _inks_ _that Michaels brothers_ _are t_ _he expectation to this rule, till it bec_ _o_ _me_ _s_ _impossible to foresee Lucifer._

Gabriel forces himself to snap out of it. No use for cheesy trips down memory lane, he reminds himself. What has happened has happened and there is no turning back. Yes, Michael of all people being out of heaven is unusual and probably means that hell standing open is a bit of a bigger problem, but stuff like that happens. He ran… no, got away and everything is like it was before. No use to think about the past or Michael, because of a random chance meeting, that totally hasn´t thrown him of the rails.

Maybe Michael is still there.

No. Absolutely not, he scolds himself. He isn´t going down that road ever again. He thought about going back to heaven after Loki and he didn´t. He became the Trickster instead and that was it. End of story.

Really, he is the Trickster still. Why has he even allowed Gabriel to get sunlight? This has to be reversed as fast as possible. He is the Trickster and he´s out of chocolate bars. Time to do something about that, instead of uselessly mopping around.

The gulls aren´t pleased by his departure anymore than by his arrival.

It´s early morning in London and he settles down at a Starbucks that won´t open for another two hours. With the professional manner of someone having learned by trial and error and proud of having figured it out without too much damage, he gets himself an extra large Caramel Frappuccino with extra caramel and extra extra extra sugar, then starts raiding the chocolate supply. Outside people are passing by, none of them paying notice, all assuming that he has some right to be where he is, very practical those gullible people.

He adds some more sugar, then some more, then starts to wonder if eating the Frappuccino with a spoon would be a better idea than drinking it. He ends up doing it after the sugar rate has climbed to 50%.

So the Trickster sits at the counter, spooning down his coffee, absentmindedly doodling some wrong written names on unused coffee cups. Not one of his best pranks maybe, but he is only trying to calm down, not yet able to be creative. After half of the coffee-caramel-sugar-paste he gets a bit better, searching for the names of the Starbucks employees in the register, then making a best-of-wrong- spelled-versions for each name on one cup each, carefully arranging them on the counter. Maybe he should return later when the Starbucks is open, the first employee to arrive will have loads of nice nickname ideas presented to him for free… knowing humans this could get interesting.

The Trickster is contently checking over his work, that while it´s nothing special, is a good start for going back to normal, when Gabriel is back all of the sudden. And with him a very annoying voice sounding like Michael and telling him to finally grow up.

The first moment the voice is so real, Gabriel actually freezes. It isn´t impossible after all, that after their encounter only hours past, Michael has finally searched for him and found him.

He never searched for you. You didn´t want him to search for you. You threw him of, remember?

Damn that voice. Damn the past.

And there it is, like he feared from the moment he saw Michael. His most annoying memory. Fragmented and torn, yet always returning, always under the surface, boiling up at almost every reminder of heaven and the past.

 _Michael and Lucifer fighting, shouting, cursing each other._

 _Raphael trying to keep Gabriel away from it, Gabriel shouting, thrashing against Raphael and Raphael letting him go. (The question of how far it would have escalated between him and Raphael, if Raphael hadn´t let go, has never stopped tormenting him)_

 _Gabriel reaching Michael and Lucifer, screaming, clinging to Michael, telling him to stop, telling both of them to stop._

 _Michael tossing him away like dirt, not caring, not even sparing a glance for his desperate little brother._

 _Lucifer begging._

 _Michael ignoring Lucifer._

 _Lucifer falling._

 _Michael cold as ice._

 _Raphael wrapping his arms around him, trying to shield him with his wings, when it is too late, far too late, all the damage already done and all that remains is a bloody, broken aftermath._

 _And Gabriel runs._

And doesn´t stop running.

Ever.

When the door opens and an annoyed Starbucks employee is faced with a mess, Gabriel is long gone, running like always.


	3. Chapter 2

The moment he is back in heaven Michael relaxes, as far as he is able to relax these days, which isn´t very much at all. But really, how could he allow himself to relax, seeing what has happened in the last hours? His vessel is going to hell in one years time, a hell gate has temporarily stood open and Lilith has escaped, which means the first and the last seal are about to break. The apocalypse is coming, he is painfully aware of that and he needs a position, so he prays for orders.

Praying, for Michael has become more natural than talking. He is praying all the time, often without even realizing it, because it has become such a part of him. Should his Father be listing (no, don´t go there, he has to be listening!) he is getting a full update of Michaels state of mind, thoughts and actions every day. Sometimes even Michael thinks that if God hears it all he has to be very much annoyed by now, but he can not bring himself to stop or lessen the frequency. Praying is all he is sure about, all he can hold himself to. So he is recapping the events of the last hours, while searching for a quiet heaven with a desk. Just in case Father is listening.

Gabriel is flashing before his eyes, the scene of his little brother starring at him in surprise and fear playing in his head over and over again. He pushes it away, because it can´t be true. It just can´t.

Raphael is already waiting for him, the bond between the last remaining archangels still strong. Although he isn´t even a real archangel, Michael thinks. Arch means leader, we were supposed to lead, but Lucifer is a traitor, Gabriel is dead and Raphael is just a mindless soldier, so it all fell to me. Standing so close, Raphael has to sense Michaels thought, or the general direction at least, but he doesn´t react. He just remains where he is, waiting for commands, a broken angel, a shadow of what he once was.

Michael takes a chair for himself and none for Raphael. That´s only fair, after all he is the general of the heavenly host and Raphael, who barely even resembles his brother anymore, is just one of his soldiers. To be honest Michael isn´t even sure why he keeps him around so much. Even though he is barely useful, Raphael remains his closest confidant, the one he talks to about almost everything.

 _Another time, another confidant._

 _They are sitting in the garden, side by side at their favorite spot, talking to each other for hours, counseling each other and organizing heaven, which has become increasingly difficult as Father insists on creating more and more fledglings. Of course Michael is officially the leader, the older one, but in this time, in these hours, it doesn´t matter. He may be the leader, but every leader needs someone to help him, remind him what he stands for and knock him into the right place sometimes._

" _I don´t know, what I would do without you, Lucifer", he tells his brother, the one closest to him, the one he trusts blindly, the one who makes even the hardest days bearable. They are Gods oldest, looking after their brothers together and their own age difference matters less and less as time goes by. They are equals, a unit, relying on each other to keep everything going._

 _Lucifer smiles back at him, that beautiful, honest smile he always wears these days and that will be seared forever into Michaels mind. "You wouldn´t last a week without me"_

 _He is right and doesn´t yet know how right he is._

Michael grinds his teeth, forcing himself back to reality. Lucifer is a traitor, Raphael is a mindless soldier and Gabriel is gone. It´s his job to make things right and prove himself to Father. If he just concentrates on being a good son, then Father will be proud of him and return.

Or that´s what he has been telling himself all those years.

He has been silent way to long, but Raphael hasn´t made a sound. He´s just standing there, not even dreaming of making a sound and it strangely angers Michael, makes him want to hit his brother over and over again, until he finally fights back.

But the scary thing is that Raphael wouldn´t fight back. Not ever. He would just take hit after hit and Michael would get even more enraged and at some point he would get tempted to use angel blades and.. no need to go there again. Everything has turned out fine that time. Raphael is still alive after all.

"The Hell gate is closed again", Michael states calmly. "I checked over all the wardings, renewed a few spells, all the things those humans never even thought about. As if you could just slam a hell gate shut with your hands! Well, you can, but it would be far open again by tomorrow. Really, what were they thinking?"

His eyes lock on Raphael, who is slightly shuffling. Of course he is nervous. He isn´t sure if his brother is expecting an answer and even Michael himself isn´t sure about that. Still, he keeps starring at Raphael, till the younger angel finally says: "Well, what would you expect from these mud monkeys?" "Did I tell you I wanted a comment?", Michael snaps. It hurts some part of him to see how Raphael stiffens at the sound of his voice, all defenses going up, but that part is buried so deep it doesn´t matter anymore. Just like Raphael.

"No, Michael, it won´t happen again", Raphael replies stiffly and Michael nods. It doesn´t matter to him anyway. It was just power play, their daily, mundane power play. And now that Raphael has reacted like he should, Michael doesn´t even know any more why he keeps doing it. Power play has lost all thrill it ever had ages ago.

"But a lot of demons have escaped", he continues. "Including Lilith" He carefully watches Raphael at these words, curious of his brothers reaction. Raphaels body betrays nothing, neither do his emotions. There is only a faint air of something Michael can´t quite identify, coming over the archangel bond. Relief? Can Raphael honestly be relieved about what´s to come?

"Also, Lucifers vessel died and was brought back to live, by my vessel taking a demon deal. He only got one year, so we have to prepare quickly. The moment my vessel goes to hell, they will try to use him as the first seal. The seals in between barely matter, there are so many of them, we have no chance guarding them all. With Lilith on the run we could have the apocalypse on our hands in less then two years" Michael folds his hands and looks at Raphael. "So what do we do?"

He can feel only pain radiate from Raphael. Pure, glaring pain and somewhere the hope for relief. "Well", Raphael says slowly. "The apocalypse isn´t necessary a bad thing. A hazard for the humans, sure, but not for us. Remember, the holy city, paradise renewed..." "Of course I remember the Bible", Michael snaps. "I also remember the prophets" And Father just had to choose the craziest one for Revelation.

He doesn´t say that of course. There are some things you just don´t say. He also never asks Raphael how accurate, he thinks the Bible is, whether he really believes everything will be fine once they made it through the apocalypse. If he even wants to make it through, or if he would be just as fine with dying. There are some things you just don´t ask. Ever.

"I will think about it. Go"

A flutter of wings and Michael is alone. His last brother has left him with the ghost of the other two.

The two who never leave him and who he can´t ever talk about with Raphael.

Lucifer.

His little brother, the first one he held, the one closest to him, the one he relied on, the traitor, the devil, the monster. The one he put in the cage all those time past. And when the seals are broken, something will come out of the cage. Something will rise and call himself by his sweet brothers name and Michael will have to fight it. Will have to win. The thing coming out of the cage won´t be his brother. Can´t be his brother, not after all this time. It will be a monster. But Michael is afraid it will feel like his brother, afraid of what he himself might do, or more frightening might not do.

He has to admit, he wants the apocalypse. First of all, because it is prophesied and it is his duty as a good son to help his fathers plans. Second, because some little part of him believes that it really can be a new beginning for the angels, a second chance, a holy city. And third, one part of him, much like Raphael, doesn´t really care and just wants it all to be over one way or another.

But for the apocalypse to play out, he has to get past Lucifer. See his brother again, look into his eyes, hear his voice and fight him. Kill him for good this time. And Michael is afraid that he will be to weak.

So he prays again. Prays and prays, till he can´t push the second ghost away any longer.

Gabriel.

Sweet, little Gabriel, who died all that time ago. The little rascal, created so long after Raphael, they hadn´t thought to get another brother. An archangel almost by afterthought, but that´s not how they thought of him. They all adored him, their little one, their baby.

And he smiled and wrapped them all around his little finger, over and over again and they always fell for it.

The one who never really had to grow up, the one they never let really grow up. Oh, later when he wasn´t really the youngest anymore, when all the other angels arrived, he would love to play big brother for them, but afterwards he would fly to the garden and snuggle himself between Michael and Lucifer without any warning and they would let him, because he would always be their youngest and they liked to keep him innocent and let him live in his rainbow-candy-world.

We should have been harder with him, Michael thinks with a stab. Father made me grow up and I made Lucifer and Raphael grow up and later all the others, but how could I do it to Gabriel? How could I ever punish him, when I knew I wouldn´t get another little fledgling, that if I wasted Gabriels innocence I wouldn´t have that joy around anymore. I wanted to protect him, but I made him too precious for this world and he didn´t survive it. How could he? How could I ask of him to be innocent and survive what happened at the same time?

He shudders. His memories of Gabriel are buried deep, maybe even deeper than those of Lucifer. He takes a strange pleasure in thinking of Lucifer sometimes, analyzing his brothers way from confidant to traitor. The Lucifer at the beginning of this way isn´t the same as the monster of the end of it, allowing him to still cherish the brother he lost, while wanting to kill the monster. But with Gabriel there is no transformation. No different Gabriels, no monster. Just his smallest, sweetest brother and then the worst day of Michaels life. Buried deep. Way to deep.

 _His fight with Lucifer is over and already he doesn´t want to think about it. Heaven is in complete disarray, so many gone, so many gone with Lucifer. Everything is a mess and he gets tired just at the thought of having to clean it_ _all_ _up. He prays to God to help him, but his Father never shows._ _He really thought the day couldn´t get any worse, when Raphael shows up, pale and frenetic. Seeing his normally so calm and soothing brother in such a state, sends yet another pang through Michael._

 _And then Raphael opens his mouth and makes it all ten times worse by asking if anyone has seen Gabriel._

 _No one seems to have._

 _The last one being Raphael, seeing his younger brother run away, after being unable to stop the fight between Michael and Lucifer._

" _Why didn´t you go after him", Michael shouts at him. "Why didn´t anyone go after him?"_

 _But in this time Raphael isn´t yet afraid of him, doesn´t duck at every attack, even when Michael seems about to explode and go maniac. "Have you seen yourself fighting? How could I step away from two of my brothers about to kill each other? You think Gabriel wasn´t the only one who wanted to stop it? Also I thought Gabriel would just go to the garden. Michael, he isn´t the fledgling you see in him anymore. He can defend himself"_

" _But there was fighting everywhere and he is missing!", Michael hollers. "It was his first real fight, he was scared and he is missing! Why did no one look after him?"_

 _No one dares to answer. There is no answer Michael wants to hear right now and no one wants to make himself a target._

 _They search for hours. Time is always strange in heaven, but now it barely seems to exist. They find other missing angels, some dead, some alive, but Gabriel seems to have vanished. Michael is at breaking point._ _He can´t process what has happened between him and Lucifer, to heaven, to everyone. Gabriel missing seems like the last cruel twist, the one that will finally do him in. I can do this, he thinks, if we only find Gabriel alive. Please, little brother, please be alive, I beg you, I can´t lose you too._

 _There is no answer. There never will be._

 _They find Gabriel hours later. He was in the garden all along, one of those secret hiding places, he only shared with Lucifer, if at all. It is_ _Samandriel_ _, who finds him_ _of all people_ _and he barely dares to call the archangels, afraid of their reaction, but Michael couldn´t care less, who found his poor little brother, he just can´t stand the waiting any more._

 _Turns out he can stand the truth even less._

 _It´s a little meadow surrounded by bushes and Gabriel lies in the middle of it, eyes starring blindly into the sky, dried streaks of tears all over his face._ _His knees are pulled up, arms close to his body, as if he tried to roll up and hide himself from the world in his last moments. Michael can´t look at it. Not at his brother, who never looked so young and innocent, not at the wings burned into the grass and least of all the angel blade driven deep into his little brothers chest._

" _Who did that?", he chokes, falling to his knees beside his little brother, unable to touch him, as if that would make it real. "I will find whoever did that and I swear..." It´s quiet around him. Way to quiet. "WHO DID THAT?", he roars. "WHO DARED DO THIS TO HIM?" And then poor Samandriel steps forward, with the air of an animal about to be slaughtered and says shaking:" There are no signs that anyone was here besides him. And the blade...uhm...it´s Gabriels."_

 _And Michael shatters._

That was it, the memory he is always trying to press down. The worst day of his life. Losing two brothers, he can never get back.

Whatever it was he met on the street today, it can not be Gabriel. It sure felt like his long lost little brother, all innocence gone, yes, but still like Gabriel, but it can´t be him. He saw the burned wings, held his little brother, held him and cries for what felt like ever, cried for Gabriel and Lucifer, for Raphael and for himself.

Whatever it was he met today can´t be Gabriel and he hates it for bringing up those memories. "I´m sorry, little brother", he whispers to himself, almost praying. "I´m so sorry and will never stop to be. But please don´t start haunting me, I can´t loose my mind just yet. Could you do that for me, Gabriel? Just wait a bit till I have time for you?"

The fact that he is actually waiting for an answer, says everything there is to know about his state of mind.

 **So, first of all, I´m sorry. If it makes you feel better, it took me hours to write this, because I had to stop every few minutes, when I was shaking too hard to type. I actually didn´t even plan for this to get quite so drastic, but then I started thinking about how Gabriel could make his escape from heaven in a way no one would ever look for him and up came this. It will be explained how he did it and rest assured, he is came out of it fine and is definitely alive and kicking. Back to Gabriel next time, because Michael is driving me nuts and I need to see our favorite Trickster alive. And now I need candy. Lots of candy!**


	4. Chapter 3

He did it again. He knew it was a bad idea, actually it had always been a bad idea, but it was just one of the things that happened sooner or later, if you were immortal and had nothing to do. Long story short, after leaving the Starbucks, the Trickster decided to drown unwanted memories in music, like any sane person would have done.

And then like any sane person he wanted to loop a great song, but was too lazy to reach for his not-really-stolen MP3-Player, because a nightstand can be incredibly far away, when listening to music. So since he couldn´t loop the song without moving, he looped time instead. And lost track.

Staggering out of the hotel a little dizzy, the Trickster reminds himself once again that solving the song dilemma via time loops is a bad idea. Music can be like drugs as he has amply experienced over the centuries and hearing the same song again and again for hours can be worse then getting stoned.

This time it was especially stupid. By the time he had finally gotten tired of the song and his brain was also functioning enough to monitor his body again, he actually moved to chose a new song and was absolutely confused when the old song started to play again three minutes later. It took him three very confusing and pretty embarrassing loops to figure out

A) that he was stuck in a time loop

B) that this wasn´t some kind of prank or attack, because

C) he had created the time loop himself and most importantly

D) how the fuck to get out of your own time loop again

It was like temporarily forgetting how to walk while being drunk and he never wants to feel that helpless confusion again. Seriously, music can be worse than getting stoned or drunk. Or doing both at the same time.

Not like he gets drunk easily these days. Sometimes the thing he regrets most about having been Loki is developing an almost complete resistance to alcohol. It´s absolutely impossible not to drink while hanging out with Norse Gods and they really don´t know when to stop, so the options narrow down to becoming resistant or dying in a drinking contest with Odin. Or feeling like dying at least.

Looking around the Trickster finds himself in this strange time-loop-and/or-pocket-universe jet lag, that gets him way too often. Bending time is all fun and games, but getting back to real time can be a pain in the ass. He´s still in London and it´s only midday, even though he has drowned himself in music for days.

Less then twenty-four hours since seeing Michael.

From the perspective of Michael and other boring people who live time in order anyway.

Gabriel tries to imagine Michael playing with time, but fails. Heavens oldest is way too straightforward, too stiff for that. Or was at least. It shocks him every time again how long it is since he has last seen his brothers. He really has no idea who Michael is now.

And Michael has no idea who he is.

At that point the thoughts go to deep again and the Trickster takes over. Has to take over. It´s better like this. It´s better to run than to risk everything.

So he silences the voice that tells him that it´s not to late, urges him to go back to that street in Wyoming, or maybe just knock at heavens door and drop by or whatever. It´s the same voice that wanted to go back after the Loki disaster. The voice that will never get, that it´s over and has been over for a very long time. That door has been closed for ages and he slammed it shut himself.

So he runs and doesn´t think about heaven and Michael, trying to have the time of his life.

Like always.

It´s the second day after he thought to see Michael and he is back in the US. He doesn´t even know why he gravitates there over and over again, but some part of him (the annoying one) is pretty sure it has to do with running again. Not so long ago, the US were a refuge for people that didn´t belong, somewhere they could vanish to and start a new life without too many rules ruining everything.

He actually took a ship from England to America once back in the early days of the US, just to feel the excitement of the people grow, see how the all smiled in the end, despite the long journey, despite them having no idea of how the future looked like for them. The weeks on the ship were stinky and crappy and crowded, but he wasn´t even tempted to just zap away. Not once.

He is getting nostalgic again, but he can´t allow Gabriel to break through once more, so he just goes along with it. The Trickster can be nostalgic too after all. About the Wild West for example. The Wild West was great. Well, if you knew how to behave.

Not so much if you are a guy from the 21th century, who has blabbed entirely too much about how everything was better when men were still allowed to be real men, next to a Trickster. Shame. The guy provides good entertainment though. The Trickster lets him get away with most things for a few hours, then looses interest and decides the most educational way to get him out of the pocket universe again, is via hanging. The guy doesn´t take it very well. Shame again.

Still, he probably learned his lesson, or some lesson at least and the Trickster is looking forward to a long evening with the saloon girls. Why abandon a perfectly good pocket universe immediately when you can still have some private fun? Sometimes illusions work just fine.

It´s the third day after he spotted Michael and he is crashing parties all over the world. If the people react to it good humored, he joins them for a while and then searches for the next party. If not… well they had their nightmare coming. Hospitality to strangers is an important value which should be taught to everyone.

When it gets too boring, he raises the stakes. Keeping illusions that are far from each other upright over a long time is pretty darn difficult, but you can make a great game out of it. His record is crashing five parties simultaneously. But today he can´t really concentrate. The nostalgia is back and threatening to become more serious than just a little bit Wild West. In the few quite moments he accidentally has, the road keeps appearing in his head over and over again. He sees Michael standing there, starring at him and then just vanishing, out of reach once again. He knows that he is the one who ran, but somehow it always seems to be Michael, who is leaving him.

So he glosses over it. Is the Trickster with all his heart, dances, shouts and sings out of key, makes stupid jokes and drinks more than any human being could possibly take. He talks to people and can´t remember their faces five minutes later. It doesn´t matter. All that matters is to get that voice, that voice that was so suspiciously quiet yesterday and sounds so much like Michael, to shut up. Binge drinking is hard work, if you are an angel, even more when you are an ex Norse god. It´s not impossible though. Almost complete resistance doesn´t mean complete resistance.

Sometimes he really hates the Trickster.

It´s the fourth day after he saw Michael and he is barely able to move. Somehow he is still able to feel entirely too much pain though, although he has of course crushed his vessel a long time ago, which is a pity, because he actually liked the soul of his current vessel. He even told him the truth about running away and Loki and the other thing and the guy just laughed and said "Come on in, crazy angel" Way better than religious people. Way better.

He spends the day rolling in self pity, eating candy and watching crappy television, including entirely too much episodes of Dr. Sexy. He doesn´t even like this crap, but he can´t seem to stop and can´t see the point of pushing himself to do anything that could remotely be defined as usefull.

So, more episodes. More candy. More pillows. More coffee. More headache pills.

Some small, traitorous part of him doesn´t think of last nights tour as a good idea anymore. Some even smaller, even more traitorous part wishes that there were someone to take care of him. He thinks about that time when he was very young, miscalculated a flight that was only meant to get attention his brothers attention and broke a wing. He still remembers the pain with shocking clarity, his own screams ringing in his ears, the way Michael held him, tried to comfort him, helped him through these terrible moments, until Father could finally deign himself to come and heal him.

It was the first time that he experienced real pain and Michael was there for him and helped him through it. He is way too sure that no one will be there to help him through the last time he will experience real pain.

That thought is way too depressing.

More candy. More pillows. More Dr. Sexy. You can´t be sad snuggled into a blanket, eating candy and watching television. It would be against the rules of creation somehow.

It´s the fifth day after he had that little starring contest with Michael and he is still miserable, but all the real candy ran out some hours ago and he needs to get some new or go crazy with illusions that just aren´t the same. So candy shopping tour it is.

A long time ago he used to gift himself holidays. Just tell himself that now was his holiday and then go candy shopping for the whole day, or just lay down at the beach and do nothing, something like that. He stopped after he realized he lives every day like a holiday and if they are all you have, holidays just aren´t fun anymore.

Candy stores have to belong to his favorite places of all time. He is still excited like a child every single time, trying to snatch as much sweet sins as possible without actually having to pay for them. Not that he ever really got into money.

He takes a job now and then, something easy where he can cheat with angel mojo, just to be around the same people for some time and he still has savings from these jobs, but stealing or illusions are just as easy. Today he actually pays, only snatching a few Twizzlers for good measure. Stealing candy in a candy store is absolutely required and it helps keeping him distracted.

Before seeing the two little boys he hasn´t thought about Michael all day.

They are maybe four and six years old and the mother very clearly doesn´t agree with their opinion on how much candy is necessary, which sends the younger one into a crying fit. The Trickster is beginning to think about how he can get the boys their candy and teach the mother a lesson at the same time, preferably without traumatizing the boys, when the older one carefully slips away to come back with what seems to be his little brothers favorite chocolate in his pocket. He just shows it to his brother for a moment, then shoves it back into his jacket with a big grin, but the little one gets it at once and his face splits into a happy grin. Isn´t it nice to have someone trying to make you happy, even if that means breaking the rules?

A long time ago the Trickster used to gift himself holidays, but an even longer time ago, his brothers used to gift _him_ holidays.

"Holiday for you", Raphael would say and then they would fly together all day and Raphael would never tell Gabriel to shut up, no matter how much he chattered.

"Holiday for you", Lucifer would say and they would sneak down to earth together, do all the forbidden, exciting stuff and never turn each other in.

"Holiday for you", Michael would say and Gabriel, the most vivid of the archangels, always running around, never able to hold still, would suddenly calm down and crawl into his brothers arms, the safest place in all of creation. He would lie there for hours, just listen to Michael talking, maybe reading to him and feeling as safe as one can be.

A road flashes in front of him, a vessel, a brother that has haunted him all week. Now he even makes him flee candy stores.

It´s the sixth day after he met Michael and the Trickster has lost the fight. Gabriel is very much alive and kicking and he is absolutely miserable. Keeping the Trickster upright has been near impossible all week, just a quick solution doomed to fail. Now Gabriel has finally given in to his thoughts, settling himself on some lonely mountain top where no one ever goes, to avoid potentially annoying human beings, while thinking (he is almost sure that the no-one-ever-goes-there-part is because the mountain is holy and climbing it means desecration, but hey, nothing like being desecrated by an angel and if the local god minds, he can damn well come and tell him that himself)

Gabriel is past trips down memory lane. He is past denial and self pity, at least concerning this one incident. He is just reliving the moment over and over again, trying to remember in every detail, how Michael felt like, how it felt to see his brother after all this time.

It must have been even harder for Michael he thinks. He is not proud of what he did to his brothers back then, it seemed appropriate at the moment, but so many things do and they never are. Maybe that is the biggest lie he has kept upright for so long. How much he wanted his brothers to search for him, while ensuring by all means that they never would.

He has never seen his dead body that first time. It was stupid of course, paying for something without seeing it, but then he has been stupid back then. Maybe still is, because he can´t stop hoping that the illusion he bought wasn´t perfect, even though it had to be; that Michael had doubts from the beginning and is searching for him right now.

He wants to be found.

He wants to run.

He wants his brothers.

He wants to be alone.

He loves Michael.

He hates Michael.

He sees the road. Over and over again.

He wishes he would have stayed.

He is glad that he ran.

He keeps seeing the road.

And he can´t take it anymore.

It´s the seventh day after he met his brother and he is standing on the road in not-even-God-knows-where Wyoming, shouting for his brother. The road is dark and empty, no human being for miles and miles and no angel anywhere. He doesn´t know what he has expected. Angels? Michael? Why would Michael stay here? Why would he send anyone? Michael thinks he is dead, because that is what Gabriel wanted him to think. He probably thought seeing Gabriel just had to do with the hell gate standing open. Why would he still be there after a week?

After Gabriel wasted a whole week.

And there he is now. Standing on his side of the road, looking over to where Michael stood. Unable to look away, even though he knows no one will come. Feeling more betrayed than he has any right to feel.

Without knowing why he lets his vessel sink into the damp, polluted grass by the road side, starring up to the stars, feeling unable to ever get up again.

Maybe he is the one getting tricked, he muses. Maybe Michael was just an illusion from hell. Alright, convincing him of that illusion would take almost Lucifer-like levels of power, which would mean basically the same problem in green, but maybe with the hell gate standing open…

The explanation isn´t convincing at all. He knows what he saw. He knows it was Michael.

So he just stays there, lying in the grass, watching the stars, waiting for eternity to pass.

All alone.


	5. Chapter 4

No one would take an angel who says he feels like floating serious, but Michael just can´t find a better way to describe his state. He floats through millennial old routines, through his prayers, through talks with other angels and even through the first plans for the apocalypse, which are in theory only discussed with Raphael and Zachariah and in practice made up by him on spot, while Raphael nods and Zachariah praises him annoyingly.

And all the time his thoughts never stray from Gabriel, while he stays locked in memories and regrets.

He should have never thought about that horrible day in the first place, he has pushed it away for so long, he should have left it buried. Now that he has delved it it foolishly, he isn´t able to surface again. He moves through heaven like a shadow, all his emotions buried together with Gabriel, constantly holding his dead little brother or seeing him at the road, dying or vanishing or both.

The leader of the heavenly host is drowning within himself and no one notices, because he never showed his emotions anyway.

That´s the price, he tells himself like he has since Lucifer fell. That´s the price he has to pay so things like Lucifer and Gabriel can never happen again. He has to keep his brothers safe and to keep them safe he has to control them. Has to predict them, organize them. That´s the price for their safety and it´s worth it.

It´s worth making them into soldiers. It´s worth never showing emotions and forbiding free will. It´s worth giving the ones who stray to Naomi for reeducation.

It´s worth it, because there will never be another Lucifer again. Or another Gabriel. Take care of your siblings every father tells his oldest, but how is anyone supposed to do that? How can you ever take care of your siblings if you don´t know where they are, what they do, what they think?

It´s simply impossible. He knows because he has tried and lost Lucifer and Gabriel. His ghosts.

Losing emotions and free will is the price for safety and he is willing to pay it.

Was willing to pay it.

The leader of the heavenly host is breaking apart and no one cares.

He is alone, he suddenly realizes some way into his drowning state and has been alone for a very long time. Funny really, how one can be alone when always surrounded by family, by brothers who never shut up and he has to look after everyone and everything, because the archangels were meant to lead but Lucifer is a traitor, Raphael a mindless soldier and Gabriel is dead, so it all fell to him and he has to please his father all alone.

Raphael, Zachariah, Uriel, Joshua and many more float past. Michael looks over the garrisons and wonders when he lost count of his siblings. They are just too many, too many to know everyone, too many too keep everyone safe. Oh, how he misses that time when it was just the four of them. Or the three of them. Or the two of them. Or when he was the one and only angel. And happy.

Yes, he was happy alone, with Father coming by now and then. Actually coming by quite often, still interested in his creation. But when he wasn´t there it was also fine for Michael. He liked that kind of being alone, exploring the garden, resting, dreaming, always knowing that it wasn´t forever, that sooner or later Father would return. He misses that peaceful kind of being alone, so different from the moments alone he steals for himself now and then, like he did on that fateful night in Wyoming and that he always feels bad about right away, or the being alone in the midst of his brothers.

 _Back when they are only four in the garden, Lucifer, Raphael and Gabriel are always around him. It´s impossible to describe the size of the garden, but they always end up around each other anyway. Lucifer and Gabriel always need attention, not as bad as they will need it later, but they both always had the tendency to make a show and throw tantrums if no one pays attention to them. Raphael meanwhile basically lives on social interaction those days and even though he is much less annoying then Lucifer and Gabriel it can be near impossible to get rid of him too._

 _Michael loves his brothers, but sometimes it just becomes to much and while all three of them never seem to tire of social interaction, Michael still remembers the days when he was the only angel in creation and the restful peace he was able to find back then and that is lost with his brothers constantly around._

 _So sometimes, very seldom, but still, sometimes he loses it and screams at his brothers to just leave him alone._

 _Then he claims a part of the garden for himself and sits down there trying to feel at peace, while his brothers are keeping their distance, shocked by his outburst._

 _And every time he feels bad about it almost immediately, but is too proud to admit it._

 _Lucifer is the brother he confides in like none other and little Gabriel always makes him smile, but it´s Raphael who always melts him after these outbursts. While Lucifer and Gabriel carefully keep their distance, sooner or later Raphael comes and sits down a few meters apart from Michael. And then they just sit there, until Michael has calmed down and wordless motions Raphael to come closer. It´s a ritual, calming every time, as is Raphael then sitting down right next to Michael and carefully leaning towards him, like he isn´t sure if Michael wants to be near him and Michael then pulling him into a hug. Always._

 _Because Michael loves his brothers and after this quick peace he is able to face them again with all their flaws. It´s hard being the only angel with a concept of private space and time for oneself sometimes, but he manages. Not least because of Raphaels calming nature. Raphael the healer, Raphael, the only one he can find comfort in silence with._

 _Raphael._

It´s like finally surfacing out of his memory filled state. Of course, he always forgets that he isn´t alone yet, that there is someone else left that was with him back then in the days of the garden, a brother also haunted by Lucifer and Gabriel.

He has to tell something about Gabriel, even if it was just an illusion of his poor, dead brother, or go mad. And the only person he can talk to about it is Raphael. How easy he forgets that he isn´t the only survivor, that there is still someone left of the early days.

He calls for Raphael almost euphorically and his brother appears immediately.

"Michael?", he asks, clearly waiting for orders. "What is the matter?" And Michael who has for one moment forgotten that the Raphael of the garden doesn´t exist any more, that this one is just a mindless soldier, not even a real archangel, just good to follow like all the other angels, comes to the point immediately and bursts out: "I think I saw Gabriel"

No reaction.

None at all.

Raphael seems like he doesn´t really get the point. Like the name means nothing to him.

Michael quietly curses himself as he crushes back to reality. What did he expect? The old Raphael to suddenly return. As if that was going to happen! Feeling weirdly crushed by Raphaels lack of reaction, he asks: "What do you think?" because these days Raphael only speaks on command.

"I think it´s impossible" Still no emotional reaction, not even over the archangel bond and somehow it´s driving Michael crazy. This is about GABRIEL, for everyones sake, their little brother, the one they broke over maybe more then over Lucifer and Raphael honestly doesn´t care. It just doesn´t seem right."I´m sure about it", he heatedly replies, more sure than he really is. "I saw and felt him the night when the hell gate stood open. It clearly was an archangel, it could only have been him"

"Gabriel is dead" The words are painfully cutting through Michael, but Raphael speaks them with no effort at all. "He is dead and never coming back. No being besides Father would have been powerful enough to trick us all with an illusion. He is dead, you held him and saw the wing marks. Let him rest"

"You don´t care" Michael isn´t even sure why it suddenly is a shock for him. He had told himself that Raphael is just a mindless soldier now for centuries, but somehow this still shocks him. How Raphael honestly doesn´t care about the apocalypse and Gabriel, the two most important things that have happened to Michael since what seems like forever. The two things he needs someone to talk about. Desperately. But Raphael isn´t that person, can´t be that person.

"I was right all the time", he continues almost desperately hoping to provoke Raphael. "You are just a mindless soldier. You don´t care about anything. Maybe I should give you to Naomi just to give

her something to do. She can´t make anything worse anyway"

He has hoped for some reaction at least now, because fear is better than nothing, but Raphael just calmly stats: "You won´t give me to Naomi" and Michael almost explodes, because his brother is right. He would never give Raphael to Naomi.

 _You just torture him yourself._

He doesn´t need that thought right now. Not at all.

"Look at me", he hisses at Raphael, who has been looking at him all the time. "I am your superior and you will do what I say and you won´t question it! Ever! Now go, find Gabriel!"

The words are out before he can really think about the, provoked by the sudden urge to prove Raphael wrong, prove to his mindless brother that he isn´t insane, but that their youngest is somewhere out there. And also by the need to see Raphael resist him. At least once.

Raphael doesn´t say that the order makes no sense and is impossible. He doesn´t say that Gabriel is dead and even if he weren´t it would be impossible tracking him now. He doesn´t say that Michael is losing it. He doesn´t question his orders, he just goes, trying to fulfill them.

And watching Raphael leave, Michael suddenly realizes with a sick twist that does not have two ghosts, but three.

 **Reviews are welcome :)**


	6. Chapter 5

Whirling.

Raphael has no better word to describe it.

Everything is whirling around him and within him, like the world has suddenly gone crazy and he doesn´t like it. Not at all.

If he didn´t knew better he would say that he is feeling sick, but angels don´t feel sick. That kind of feelings is there for humans, for mud monkeys, Gods afterthought, almost as bad as hell spawn.

So he tries to ignore it, but annoyingly some part of him doesn´t want to. Some part of him wants to dive into it, feel more, feel as much as possible, suck it in, like he is dying of thirst.

Not like angels die of thirst. That´s a mud monkey problem too.

Still, he has tried not to feel anything for so long. So long he got used to being empty, even learned to be glad about it, because if you can´t feel anything, at least no one can hurt you. At least you are safe. Mindless soldier, Michael calls it, but at least mindless soldiers don´t hurt. They jam it all into a layer of indifference and carry on. Soldier on.

And no one can hear the screams from within the layer. Not even Michael. Or Michael just doesn´t care. That´s alright, because it´s not like Raphael cares. If he doesn´t care about anyone, then no one should be constricted to care about him.

But somehow this whole Gabriel story is messing him up. It´s messing him up in a way that normally only Michaels remarks are able to, the only thing that still cuts through the layer the only thing that still makes him flinch and hurts him every single time.

There is a certain irony in it, he supposes, even though he doesn´t get the joke. The only times he feels alive, the only times he cares about anything, the only times someone cuts through all the layers to the part that has somehow, scared and scarred, managed to stay Raphael the healer, are when Michael beats him down, tells him he is a mindless soldier, worthless, useless, worth dead as much as alive.

But this is somehow different, somehow worse than Michael. Michael makes him feel worthless, small and beaten up, but this whirling, this sickness is something new. Something he has never felt before.

And he is becoming addicted to it way to fast.

Gabriel might be alive.

Michael thinks Gabriel is alive.

Michael has lost his mind.

He wishes he could say that there is some joy he gets out of that thought, that he is somehow desperate to see his little brother, that he is searching for him with all his power, that he can´t think of anything else and the reason why no one notices is that he has become a master in covering up his emotions in front of Michael.

But it wouldn´t be the truth.

The truth is, that some part of Raphael thinks it´s his duty to react like that, also because Michael clearly expects it from him and Michaels words are law. Some part of him, the same part that is getting addicted to the whirling, also _wants_ to react like this and is ready to pretend, to conjure up an image of what he should feel, so maybe if he pretends long enough it can really become a part of him, just a little bit. Just enough to satisfy the deep buried healer part left in him.

But honestly, the emotions are just not there.

He can´t relate to Michaels obsession, to his desire to find Gabriel. Yes, there is the whirling, but the whirling is something else entirely and he could stop it anytime he wants to.

He doesn´t care about Gabriel or about the past. Can´t even remember really remember Gabriel or the garden, the time it was just the four of them. It´s just blurry images here and there with no meaning attached to them.

Michael might be lost in the past, but Raphael doesn´t even remember the past and sometimes that worries him.

He should remember, shouldn´t he? Michael certainly does, but then Michael is the eldest and the leader of the heavenly host and his superior, so maybe it´s just natural that Michael remembers and Raphael doesn´t. But then, some of the younger angels seem to remember the time before Lucifer turned traitor and he should have a better memory then them. Shouldn´t he?

But then again, the ones who remember tend to be the rebellious ones, the ones that need to be reeducated at some point, some of them more than once, so maybe it´s for the best that Raphael doesn´t remember. He never hesitates to sign someone over to reeducation, but it certainly doesn´t seem like something he would like to experience himself.

He thinks of Castiel and that surprises him, because he normally sees the younger angels as a uniform mass, but Castiel has the unfortunate talent of sticking out. He also has the unfortunate talent of sticking to the wrong things.

He remembers dragging Castiel to Naomi for the third time in a row, because that fledgling somehow still remembered the time before Lucifers rebellion and continued blabbing about it. "How is that even possible?", he remembers shouting at Naomi, while twisting his fingers

into Castiels neck, the younger angel shaking with fear and pain, but somehow still not crying out. "He was already reeducated twice and he was no more then a fledgling at the time! If you can´t perform your duty, maybe I should report YOU to Michael"

Naomi didn´t break. She even had the impudence to tell Raphael that Castiel had behaved well enough after the last time and that Michael hadn´t seen another reeducation necessary, so maybe SHE should report HIM. To which Raphael answered that even if Castiel didn´t try to criticize Michael again, he clearly still remembered and that it was better to be safe than sorry. Naomi just shrugged at that and took her impudence to a new level by saying: "Or you are just jealous, because he remembers and you don´t. You think he has no idea whats going on, but you aren´t any better yourself. Now excuse me, I have work to do"

He was really close to reporting her then, but her words had struck him in a way he hadn´t thought possible.

Jealous.

He wasn´t jealous, why should he be?

Lower angels were almost as bad as mud monkeys, the rebellious ones even more so, why should he be jealous? Naomi clearly had no idea what she was talking about and she dared accuse HIM of having no idea? He was closest to Michael, second in command, he knew everything that was going on. She was just trying to cover up her failure of getting Castiel in line.

Still the comment got him way to deep and for some time he was thinking about the possibility of Michael sending him over to Naomi st some point in the past and that being the reason why he doesn´t remember, or why, if he does, the memories have no meaning to him.

But that´s impossible. Michael would never allow that. Punish Raphael himself yes, but reeducation like any regular angel? Raphael doesn´t think so. Also if that was the case, Naomi would have gloated way more. For the one who´s duty it is to reeducate the ones who can´t keep their mouth shut, she is incredibly bad at keeping her own mouth shut.

He definitely should report her for something!

But first he has to instruct a garrison about searching for Gabriel. Gabriel is of course dead, but Michael gave the command to search for him anyway and Raphael would never dare disobey.

Not ever again.

So he stands in front of the garrison, telling them about the encounter as briefly as possible and hopefully without making Michael seem like a lunatic. He also leaves out why Michael was on earth in the first place, because Michael hasn´t announced plans for a possible apocalypse yet and there is no need to disturb the soldiers.

No one asks anyway. No one ever asks about anything. Raphael looks into the faces as empty as his and feels just the familiar hole inside him. There are no sensations over the angel bond, if the angels are emotionally reacting to the commands about searching for Gabriel, they are hiding it well.

As they should. Angels are soldiers. No need for emotions.

Yet Raphael can´t suppress a little jolt of righteousness, when he sees Castiel in the garrison, fitting in perfectly, his eyes as empty as everyone else. Finally that one is under control. And the reason he is glad about that is NOT that he was jealous or anything. It´s his duty to keep everyone in line and every rebel is a danger, so it´s only natural to be glad about preventing one.

Damn Naomi.

He has to other things to think about. Like, how to find Gabriel. He has to give orders about that and he will have to improvise. He doesn´t like improvising. Not at all.

"Search for big manifestations of power", he commands. "He is an archangel, his power will have to show somehow"

" _But if he were still alive wouldn´t his presence have shown over the emergency frequency long ago?"_

Everyone freezes harder than seems possible. No one ever asks questions about anything. But sometimes things like this happen, an angel not able to control his thoughts and accidentally sending them over said emergency frequency, that every angel is permanently linked to. Depending on the thought, it can sent you to reeducation.

Still, Michael decides about reeducation, not Raphael, so Raphael is about to report the angel, whose name he doesn´t even remember (something long, maybe 14 or 16 syllables) when he hears himself answer: "No, he learned to turn that off a long time ago"

The next moment he has the strong urge to turn himself in.

With one action he has at the same time legitimized rebellion and told a whole garrison that it is possible to turn the emergency frequency off, something only the archangels should know about. And in all honesty, not even them.

So he turns himself and the whole garrison over to Michael, before sending them off to search for Gabriel.

Michael of course shouts at him and calls him a mindless soldier again, but better that than lie to Michael. He can not lie to Michael. Michael is his leader and he won´t lie to him or keep anything from him ever.

His stupid mistake is long taken care of when he stops for the first time to think about why he suddenly knew that Gabriel had learned to turn off the emergency frequency before his death and he realizes it´s one of the blurry pictures, the few things he remembers about Gabriel.

Gabriel and Lucifer sneaking off to earth and Michael getting a panic attack because he is unable to reach them, something that has never happened before.

Everything is ridiculously wrong about that picture.

Why would Lucifer want to get to earth? Why would anyone want to get to earth? And Michael would never get a panic attack, it´s absolutely ridiculous.

Snorting he dismisses the picture and has a tiny feeling that he should care, when it blurs even more and leaves him with one less memory.

But he still can´t bring himself to care.


	7. Chapter 6

She feels it as soon as she enters her temple. It´s about 3 pm, which means Kalighat is closed to the public, while the pujaris present food offerings to their goddess. Too bad for them that said goddess has been out with Baldur for the past six hours and has already eaten as much as she enjoys. She doesn´t even need food anyway, but the she thinks the offerings cute and considerate, so sometimes she takes them to please the mortals. As a goddess of death and destruction, it´s nice to have someone who honestly cares for you.

That´s why she loves Kolkata. It´s one of the places where she is viewed as a protector of humanity, rather than a destroyer, as a godly mother, who uses her wrath against demons to save her children. She can´t necessarily say she agrees with that interpretation of her character, but sometimes it´s just relaxing to have people believe in you like that.

At least being at Kalighat is better than hanging out with Baldur, she muses, while crossing the temple to reach her secret private apartments, carefully hidden from human sight. She is not sure what her priests would do if they found out that their goddess from time to time lives next door to them. Actually she has been playing with the thought of revealing herself for years, but somehow she never pulls through. It´s better to just watch the mortals she reminds herself. Interacting only brings difficulties for both sides.

The feeling she had since she entered gets stronger while crossing the temple and has become a rather persistent itch in the neck, by the time she gets to her apartment. It´s a strange tingle, not really threatening, somehow familiar, somehow even positive, but she wishes it to be a real intruder, someone she can kill without hesitation. She can still feel Baldur beneath her, one of the most boring times she had sex in her whole existence and she is incredibly frustrated with him and with herself. Why does she even suffer that boring idiot or a Norse god in general for that matter? Norse gods are all either boring or stupid or annoying or all at once.

She wants to kill someone slowly, throttle him and dance on his dead body. Anything to get the frustration out.

Anything.

The tingling is getting rather annoying too. She pushes the door wide open, fire licking over her hands, ready to kill. "HOW DARE YOU INTRUDE..." she begins in her true voice and stops herself right there.

He is casually sitting on the bed, back leaning against the head piece, brown hair tousled, arms crossed behind his head and that old smug grin on his face. "Kali. Is that any way to greet your lover?"

She slams the door shut, throwing a fire ball, that hits the wall close to his head, but the Norse god doesn´t even flinch.

"I didn´t even see you for fifty years, Loki! Fifty years! I´m not some mortal girl you can have your way with for one night and then leave on the roadside! I´m Kali, goddess of death..." "...destruction and whatever", he finishes neglecting. "I know your record"

The next fire ball hits so close, it makes even Loki flinch.

"Come on", he gasps, playing hurt. "You didn´t even miss me a little bit?"

Kali hisses in frustration, determinant not to give him power over her ever again. "No, I didn´t. Go to Asgard where you belong, Loki, or I will drag you. You know I will"

Loki´s grin doesn´t change a bit, but there is something in his eyes, just barely visible to Kali, who is able to read him like no one else. Is he afraid of going to Asgard? What has that idiot gotten himself into now?

"We don´t need to make this complicated, do we?", he drawls on, but Kali is seeing through it now. "All the way to see you and you want to slam the door into my face" _Let me stay_ "Is that the way of goddesses nowadays?" _I need you_ "The world really has become a dark place" _Please_

"Stop making a show", she hisses, thinking of Baldur. Good, little, boring Baldur. Baldur who would never dare dropping in bold like this, or disappearing for fifty years in the first place. Baldur, who is so predictable, so in love with her, in so way over his head.

Gods don´t hold much on monogamy and are almost expected to cheat on people. The only real rule is not to cheat your current partner with someone from his own mythology, as this just causes too much trouble.

But that is exactly what Loki is.

Trouble.

Trouble, a whirlwind, an explosion. She thinks about her lame sex with Baldur, about how tame she has become over the last years. Loki is rattling on and on, but she doesn´t listen. He is trouble and trouble is what she needs right now the end her frustration. There is no decision. There is none needed.

She is at him in a blink, shutting him up with a kiss. He responds immediately, playing with her tongue. Their clothes come of quicker than humanly possible.

Sex with Loki is a horrible idea. But that is kind of the point.

She has lost all track of time, when they finally pull apart. Not for the first time she asks herself why she even does sex with mortals anymore, when she can have something like that. It´s way different god to god. Way more spiritual and intimate if it´s done right, spirits almost dissolving into each other, feeling the other one in ways mortals can´t even imagine. Which doesn´t mean, she doesn´t like the bodily part. Good thing Loki is good at both. Better than she would ever tell him, no need to boast his ego even further.

They are lying between the tangled bedsheets, Loki surprisingly quiet, almost snuggling up to her, while her hands trace up and down his back, an excuse to get her hands on his shoulder blades. Lokis shoulder blades are just fascinating and it took her way to long to figure out that they haven´t got anything to do with his bodily form. She has known him in three different bodies and the shoulder blades always remain the same.

Too big to be human and with these weird knobs she can´t quite make sense of. She always thought it just had to do with him being a Norse god, like her having multiple arms in her true form, but Baldur hasn´t got those knobs as she knows now. Fascinated by the mystery, she places her hands right over his shoulder blades and presses. Loki jerks around instantaneously, hissing in a mixture of mild pain and surprise. "I thought this was a massage, not torture", he complains, shifting away slightly.

"You can have torture too", she gives back unblinking. "I can cover some weird tastes, you know that" "Yeah, good old times", he gives back smirking as usual and moves closer again, maybe eager for another round, but she pushes him away.

"Not before you tell me, why you are here! And don´t invent some heartbreaking story on how you missed me, because if you had you could have dropped by any time these past fifty years! Do you have trouble with Odin again? Or is it the Christians? Don´t tell me it´s the Christians!"

There it is. That vulnerable side Loki always tries to hide, which he is worse at than he thinks, blinks up for a moment and his whole being starts feeling incredible young for god. Then it´s gone, although she doesn´t miss that he has recoiled a bit and is suddenly wearing underwear. "You could say I´ve got family problems", he finally gives away. "And I really need somewhere to crash, so if you don´t mind..."

"If I don´t mind being your emergency program, you mean. Fifty years and you think you can just drop in again and that´s it?" She´s now wearing underwear too.

"Hey, it´s you who started kissing me", he shoots back.

"You used tongue"

"You enjoyed it"

"You started taking of your clothes"

It´s like the old days, right after Mercury hooked them up for fun. Lying in bed, arguing about everything and nothing, till someone escalates. Baldur is boring, but at least he is uncomplicated. Loki can make a fuss about everything and anything and normally Kali likes discussing endlessly with him, but right now she don´t have the nerves for his attitudes.

"Alright", she interrupts Lokis vivid description of the last hours, really hoping her apartment is still soundproof. Otherwise her priests have to be pretty scandalized by now. "Just tell me why you are really here and I will maybe let you stay"

"I told you. Family problems. Thor can be annoying as hell"

She knows he isn´t lying. Not a word. But he isn´t really telling the truth either.

Anyway there is no way of getting the truth out of him now and there also is the prospect of spending the day with someone else than Baldur. There is no way she is going to let him get away with his act, but that can wait for now. Despite herself she is surprisingly glad to have that Norse idiot back in town.

"Alright" She gets up, now fully dressed. "No more sex then. Want to come to the market with me?" He is looking up at her sceptically, clearly expecting a trap. "Where´s the trapdoor? I love Indian markets"

She doesn´t want to smile at him, but her bodily form is betraying her. "I know you do. No trapdoors" "Oh" He seems stunned, but his trademark grin is back. "In that case..." He is up and dressed in the blink of an eye, holding the door for her. "Mylady"

Kali hits him on the back of his head for it.

Although their conversation has been on English so far, the moment they exit the temple, Loki starts chattering in fluent Bengali, seemingly relaxing in the mass of people on the street. Kali lets herself fall back a bit, just to watch him. It´s surprising how easy he fits in, even though he looks clearly European. He is another person in the east, more relaxed somehow, like everything that´s bothering him has fallen away. He always was a runaway at heart, she muses. Maybe that´s why he never liked taking her to Asgard.

Loki turns to her and she allows him to take her arm. Humans are swapping around them, bustling, shouting, living their petty little lives. And Kali, the black one, the destroyer, doesn´t mind. She and Loki don´t stand out, just another couple on the way to the market and she strangely likes it.

Seeming mortal, going under. A part of the whole. It´s facinating.

"You will stay for Holi, I hope", she says, while they are strolling about the market. Loki suddenly seems very interested into exotic flower arrangements. "Loki!" "That´s five months", he whines. "I can´t possibly plan five months ahead" "You are immortal!" "I don´t like bonds" "You really do" "Just for the record, I wasn´t the one who started talking dirty" "First time in ages" " _You_ started kissing!" "That´s nothing compared to what _you_ started!" They could have gone on for ages like that, but the flower merchant is looking at them rather peculiar, so Kali wrestles Loki away into a more quiet corner. So much for seeming mortal.

"You will stay for Holi though", she starts again, after Loki has bought her a new ceremonial knife and she has gotten him three portions of Jalebi in return. She still can´t decide if it has been a good idea ntroducing Loki to that particular sweet years ago. At least the fried dough dipped in sugar syrup it an easy way to get him happy and ready to actually listen. "Alright", he agrees, almost relaxed, wolfing down more sugary mess. "But if I stay with you for Holi, you must come for Eid al-Fitr" "Deal", she answers laughing. "If I hadn´t seen you in the US, I would never believe you are European" He shrugs. "European feasts are boring. No colors, not enough sugar, just family gatherings. More like torture if you ask me"

But he still looks happy and even though Kali would never admit it out loud she is so glad about seeing him like this, she almost kisses him right there and then. Yes, Loki is trouble, Loki is a bad idea and sometimes you just want to hit him in the face, but it´s worth it. And she knows that it´s worth it, since that Holi, when they were a fresh couple.

 _Introducing Loki to Holi has been a good idea, Kali knows as they stroll down the streets together. Loki has been excited for twenty-four hours straight now, first buying more paint on the market than any human being could possibly carry, then being surprisingly quiet and happy at the bonfires, then insisting on being up and on the streets at four o´clock, carrying a whole arsenal of paint. "No use of your powers", she reminds him again about the Hindu gods golden rule for Holi. "If you get paint in your face, you get paint in your face" He just grins at her, like a happy puppy. "Don´t worry. Where would be the fun of it elsewise?"_

 _The streets are filling rather quickly. Apparently Loki isn´t the only one in the city yearning to start the color spectacle and it´s not long till everyone is throwing paint. Kali gasps as the first fistful hits here, looking around for an attacker and finding a small, giggling girl, filling her fist again. She could smash that mortal child within the blink of an eye, but she doesn´t. Not today. It´s Holi and Holi is meant to erase differences just for one day. Just for one day in India the caste doesn´t matter. Neither does rich or poor. Or god or mortal._

 _By the time she is finished with her attacker, the little girl is screaming with delight. Her hair is plastered pink and green, while Kalis dress has become blue and orange. When the girl runs back to her family, because she is out of paint, she turns to wave and smile at Kali. And Kali smiles back without thinking and moments like this are what keep her up all over the year. Moments like this are what makes life worth living after too many years to count._

 _That is when she remembers Loki. She turns around and finds him cornered by a group of street boys. The Norse god is double over, covered over and over with all colors of the rainbow and making strange noises, she has never heard him make before. Her first instinct is to pull the boys away and get him out of the trap, but then he turns and looks at her._

 _And she realized he is laughing like she has never seen him laugh before._

 _This isn´t the typical smug Loki grin. This isn´t his sarcastic laugh. This is genuine honest laughter, coming right from the heart. He is shaking with laughter, tears streaming down his face, if he were human, he would be choking on it._

 _She realized with a pang she has never seen him truly happy before and then with a warm feeling that it´s the most beautiful thing she has ever seen._

 _That is when Kali really falls in love with him._

 _She make her way through the street boys, pulls him upright and kisses him on the mouth._

 _He tastes like salt, sugar and paint. All around them the street boys are cheering and pelting them with more paint. She doesn´t care. It´s perfect. For once in her existence a moment is just perfect._

 _Holi creates memories that keep you alive all over the year and that Holi created memories able to keep Kali alive forever._

 _Lokis genuine laughter, as he looked up to her, face smeared with orange, pink and yellow._

 _That perfect kiss._

 _All the other pagan think Loki and Kali were just together for sex and fun. They thought it fun to hook them up, never dreaming that it could become more than a crazy joke. The trickster god and the goddess of destruction. A couple of fun weeks nothing more. And there wasn´t more, till she heard him laugh._

Kali pulls herself out of her memories to see him smile once more, but suddenly she realizes that that isn´t the only reason. Her body has been on high alert for some time now, quicker to pick up danger than her consciousness, instincts honed over thousands of years taking effect.

The same tingle she felt early in the temple, but more threatening this time, more intense somehow. Her eyes flicker over the market, taking it all in.

Humans bustling everywhere, going about their business, shouting, talking, making a lot of noise, nothing out of order.

Loki is next to her, munching his second portion of Jalebi already, seemingly unaware of any danger. It´s often she who senses danger first. His reflexes are fine, she has found in the past, and he never really lets his guard down, but she is the goddess of destruction and sometimes it takes one to know one.

There!

Now that she knows what kind of danger she is searching for, she sees them all. Five of them at least, possessing the bodies of businessmen, traders and shopping housewives. And they are slowly making their way through the crowd, towards the two gods.

She nudges Loki with one hand, while grasping for the knife Loki bought her only minutes ago with the other. Yes, it´s only a ceremonial knife in theory, but in Kalis hands everything can be deadly and Loki would never buy her a knife that can´t be useful in some way. She hates being able to only use two arms, but that is the price of a human body. If it comes down to it, she can at least still use her fire.

Loki turns to her, still eating sweets and seeming perfectly content and she hates that she has to destroy that precious mood, but she can´t let him run into this unprepared either. "Judeo-christian demons. Five or six as far as I can see", she announces casual in Ancient Macedonian, a language extinct for more than 2400 years as far as the mortals are concerned and therefore the emergency language of many gods, when they have to discuss certain topics in a crowd of mortals or don´t want to cause a panic.

For one second fear and resignation flicker over Lokis face and he nearly drops his Jalebi, but experience and training soon get the better of him and he answers just as casual: "There are to many humans around. We have to get them away from the crowd" "Or we could just leave", Kali answers, but she already knows that he won´t. There is no way of knowing what the demons will do to the mortals when frustrated and although Loki can play the part of not giving a fuck about mortals (or anyone at all) very convincingly, she knows he won´t let that happen.

And neither would she. Not in her country, her city, to her people.

Some Indians see Kali as protector and sometimes she needs to prove to herself that they are right.

Together with Loki, she pushes towards the exit. The street will be just as busy, but from there on, she has a few quite places in mind. If they can hold the demons of that long.

"That doesn´t make sense", she tells her companion. "They are clearly following us and specifically us. Why would christian demons be interested in a Hindu goddess and a Norse god?" Loki remains uncharacteristically quiet and Kali gives a sigh, old anger rising up again. So that´s why he is here. Family problems maybe, but there is something else, as she knew there would be. And she even guessed this one.

"You didn´t provoke them or anything, did you?" "No, of course not", he gives back, insulted like only Loki can be, when he is clearly the one who is wrong. "If anything they provoked me"

"Could you just stop picking fights with the Christians?", she hisses back, at the end of her patience, feeling more betrayed than she would ever admit. "It´s not like this is the first time that happens, it´s not even the first time you run to me, because of it. The Christians are an arrogant, crazy pack, just leave them alone, Loki! Or if you can´t do that, don´t come hiding with me, pretending you are coming because you like me again. I tried to be fair, but you really just use me as emergency drop off"

"It´s not like that", he tries to save himself. "I really wanted to see you and… damn it, Kali, I´m not picking fights with them! I never did!" "Then why does it seem like every Christian demon hates you, even though they rarely bother other mythologies?", she shuts him down and wants to punch him for that stupid fake grin, that is back on his face, replacing the real smile from earlier, the one she loves, but they have spent to much time fighting and now the demons are on them and there are still way to many humans around.

Even though she really has enough of Loki at the moment, she moves to cover his back, so he can do his tricks, without being surprised by more attackers, while she stabs the nearest demons with her new knife. The good news is, that it indeed works against demons. The bad news is, that mortals don´t react too well to a stabbing in a market. This is why she hates crowds when she fights.

A panic is quickly building around them and now mortals are definitely going to die and she hates the stupidity of the whole situation. She stabs another demon and sees Loki pushing two into a pocket universe and just as she thinks that that should be almost all of them, she suddenly realizes that it isn´t five or six demons attacking them.

More like fifty or sixty.

"Loki", she shouts over her shoulder. "What on earth, did you do to them?" He refuses to answer, letting one of the demons run into a storage room, that wasn´t there previously and vanishes soon after.

Kali shots a look around, analyzing the situation and not liking it at all. Too many demons. Too many mortals stuck in the fight. None of the demons seem to have a way of killing her or Loki, but still, she doesn´t want to get run over by them and starts to contemplate either leaving the market, or showing her true form. Mortal bodies definitely don´t have enough arms.

And suddenly Loki is moving away from her, shouting: "Everyone close your eyes" in Bengali and there is a bright light, so bright that even Kali can barely face it, definitely bright enough to blind mortals with it and through the light she hears screams, sees Loki fighting in a way she has never seen him fight before and above his shoulders…

Well, she thinks, surprised by her own calm, at least that´s an explanation for his shoulder blades.

When the light retreats, the market is eerily quiet. Mortals are lying everywhere, whimpering from shock, some of the faster ones already up and running towards the exit, some of them deathly still, with their eyes burned out.

The being calling himself Loki is standing in the middle of it, eyes wide open, seemingly shocked by himself.

Kali walks right up to him and places the knife against his throat.

"I don´t know too much about Norse mythology", she tells him, trying to hide the tremor in her voice and trying to ignore the vacant look in his whisky-brown eyes "but I am pretty sure Norse gods aren´t supposed to have wings"

 **Sekkiera isn´t the only one allowed to review ;)**


	8. Chapter 7

**Happy Easter everyone :)**

Michael knows what it is, before Raphael even has the chance to give him a report. Frozen in shock the oldest of the archangels tries to calm himself down by praying fervently, while triumph about being right, joy about Gabriel being alive somehow, fear at the thought of actually having to face his youngest brother now and sudden doubt if all of this isn´t just him going mad after all, battle each other inside him in an absolute mess.

What irks him maybe most, is how easily he would have missed it, if he hadn´t been on high alert for days, paying special attention to the archangel bond and alerting Raphael to pay attention as well. It wasn´t much of a signal or a call, just a tug, almost certainly involuntarily from Gabriel´s side, little contacts that just happen and that you learn to ignore fairly quickly, when you are permanently linked to your siblings.

Hadn´t his thoughts been continuously on Gabriel the past days, he would have just thought it a little slip up by Raphael, not worth mentioning. After all who else could it be? The younger angels feel way different, he hasn´t felt Lucifer since… his betrayal and Gabriel was dead, so he has started thinking of the archangel bond as a two person bond long ago.

He doesn´t even dare think about how many times he has put a subconscious contact with Gabriel down on it being Raphael and how many times Raphael probably has thought it to be him. If he thinks about that, he will really go crazy. Gabriel was there, all this time, still part of the bond and he didn´t notice! Michael is supposed to be the leader, the oldest, taking care of everyone and he didn´t notice his little brother still being alive! It´s just impossible to dwell on it.

He prays harder, for guidance, for Gabriel, for something. For anything.

When Raphael comes to report that he and some of the younger angels felt archangel power, that was neither from Raphael nor Michael, Michael can barely hold to himself. "So I was right and you were wrong"

It´s gloating, power play, unworthy of him, really, but he can´t stop himself. Gabriel is alive somewhere, he saw him, felt him, twice now and this time he wasn´t the only one, it just has to be, his sweet, little brother has to be alive. It´s not overimagination, it´s not! Michael feels like he is bristling with energy. Like Gabriel always did. Oh, Father, it´s so good to finally be able to think about Gabriel again, not always having to push him away, because it just hurts to much.

Raphael is destroying the mood once again. If Michael was furious at him not caring about Gabriel before, he is livid now. Raphael felt their younger brother himself, yet he still doesn´t seem to care, all Michael can detect is doubt, too strong to be fully concealed. "What is it?". He snaps at Raphael. "I know you want to say something, say it! No, no excuses, say it! And stop shuffling for Fathers sake!"

Raphael is more than reluctant, but his fear of disobeying a direct command from Michael, is more direct and therefore stronger than his fear of upsetting Michael with something he says, as Michael is very much aware of. "Well", he begins carefully, weary of Michaels gaze on him. "Say Gabriel was alive..." "He IS alive", Michael almost shouts, feeling ready to hit Raphael, yet happy to be able to speak of Gabriel in the present. _Is alive, is alive, is alive!_

"Gabriel is alive", Raphael corrects emotionless, like it doesn´t matter anyway. "So why didn´t he try to contact us since Lucifers betrayal?"

Michael is unable to do anything but stare at him in response. Raphael didn´t mean it as an attack, he is certain of that, he is certain that Raphael would never dare attack him, but yet it feels like being hit in the stomach with holy fire. The question burns through him without mercy, bringing back feelings he thought he would be finally able to get over now.

It felt like this when Lucifer betrayed him.

It felt like this when Father didn´t answer anymore.

It felt like this when he held Gabriels still body, blade still sticking in his chest, wingmarks in the grass, the garden, their garden, their home. Little, innocent Gabriel dead in his arms, Gabriel…

No.

It´s over. He won´t need to suffer that memory ever again. Gabriel is alive and well and Michael will bring his brother home, like he should as an oldest brother. Take care of your siblings. There will be an explanation for the body that felt so real, he can still feel it sometimes, there will be an explanation why Gabriel went missing all the time after that. A solid, simple explanation, that won´t hurt anyone.

Please, Father, please.

"Maybe he couldn´t", he tries to defend Gabriel and protect himself from unwanted truths. "Maybe he wanted to contact but..." He stops when he realizes where that thought is bound to lead. Raphael doesn´t have the decency to restrict himself like Michael does.

"You mean someone captured him" Raphael looks more or less openly skeptic now, something he hasn´t dared to do for years. "Michael, you know that if someone captured him and held him that long, there won´t be much left to safe"

The casual way he says that, makes the statement even worse. Michael tries to answer, put him in his place, but he can´t seem to find the words for it, or any words at all. The pictures that assault his mind are the absolute horror, Gabriel going slowly mad in a cell somehow being the kindest of it. Michael has learned way to much about torture since he last saw Gabriel and he knows he will never be able to get the vivid images his mind produces out of his head again.

Holy fire.

Please, Father, whatever happened to Gabriel, don´t let it have anything to do with holy fire!

He sees Gabriel in shackles, Gabriel getting tortured with angel blades and holy fire, his little brother, the one wanted to keep safe at all costs, the one he made to precious for this world, Gabriel with broken wings, Gabriel to injured and tired to even scream, Gabriel managing now and then to activate the archangel bond, just a bit, just a tug, and getting ignored over and over again.

It takes all of Michael´s carefully assembled self-control to calm himself down again. The bond between Raphael and him must have gone crazy in the last minute and he can´t help but wonder if Gabriel felt it too.

Gabriel, who definitely wasn´t kidnapped all this time, because there is just no reason for it. Besides there is no way someone or something would know when to grab Gabriel, because the escalation with Lucifer happened way too sudden, or that something would be able to fake Gabriel death like that and leave no trace in heaven. Besides what would be the point of it all?

Information? There was no attack on heaven with specific inside information, that by now would have been outdated anyway.

Hostage taking? Unlikely without demands.

Just revenge or simple cruelty? What monster would do that to a young angel?

 _Well_ , the voice in his head, that always sounds way too much like Lucifer, answers. _You would._

 _Remember Gadreel? Remember Abner? Remember…_

"Maybe he went with Lucifer", Raphael interrupts his thoughts and everything inside Michael begins to roar.

From the way Raphael cowers and looks at him, he must have slapped his brother, but he doesn´t remember. It was an automatic reaction, fueled by built up pain, fear and anger, launched onto the easiest target.

"He didn´t", he tells Raphael sternly, because there is no other refuge left for him and he has just too many memories of Lucifer teaching Gabriel tricks, the two of them stealing off to earth together or establishing another of their secret hiding places, that Michael and Raphael only ever got to see, after they weren´t in use anymore. "Gabriel isn´t a traitor, he didn´t go with Lucifer and you will never say that again, or this is the least punishment you will get. Gabriel is alive. He didn´t go with Lucifer. And you follow my orders and don´t talk when you are not asked. Do you understand me?"

Raphael manages a "Yes, of course" and Michael feels like he himself is swaying at the brink of madness, just waiting to crash down.

That´s something else he has learned since he last saw Gabriel. That angels can fall in more ways than just one.

"Good", he continues. "I will go down to earth and look at the source of the archangel power. I need five from the garrison, take Balthazar, choose the rest yourself" Gabriel loved that kid and Balthazar never really gave up on him. Not like Michael did. "You stay here, take care of everything. Do you understand me?"

A quick nod, a pressed out "yes" and Raphael is off. Michael sinks back in his chair, trying to think neither of the past nor the future and just pray.

Michael hates having to get a vessel and although he would never admit it to anyone, he has never gotten comfortable on earth. The first time Father told him about the place, he got kind of excited, but more about the concept of it all, than about the possibility of actually seeing it. While Lucifer, Gabriel and even Raphael couldn´t wait to see Fathers creation and didn´t seem to know another topic anymore, Michael spent days asking himself what was wrong with the garden, so that it should be replaced and what was wrong with himself, because he wasn´t eager to leave the garden at all, afraid even, though he would never admit that to his brothers.

So he prayed for answers and it was a time when Father didn´t come by often, but sometimes he actually did and answered the archangels questions. "You are not a coward", he told his eldest son, as they sat together in the garden, listening to Lucifer, Raphael and Gabriel playing in the distance and Michael didn´t know how much he would grow to miss that voice in the future, that feeling of not always being the one responsible, of just being able to lean back and relax, because even if something were to happen to his younger siblings now, Father would go and fix it and he could just stay back, without being a bad brother.

"You are my oldest, the one with the strongest relation to the garden, it is natural that you don´t want to leave" "But I want to leave", Michael protested. "I just..." He hung his head shamefully, even then afraid of disappointing his father, but God just laughed. "You are afraid", he said, without any reproach in his words. "But that is alright. You are created to be a leader, Michael, the leader of heaven and I am glad that you like heaven so much. Just...just give earth a try, would you?" And Michael promised, because he never wanted to disappoint his father. Not in all of eternity.

He almost stayed in the garden anyway, when the first time they were allowed to visit earth came. It wasn´t like he didn´t want to, more like he couldn´t do it, like the garden was alive and holding him back. He went to earth in the end, because he couldn´t destroy his brothers happiness and because he couldn´t ever disappoint his father. But he never understood the fascination his brothers held for earth, the eagerness with which Gabriel would go there over and over again, the way Lucifer never stopped being fascinated by the planet, even as he grew to despise humans, how Raphael never minded taking a vessel and how this was one of the few aspects of him that never changed despite everything.

It´s something he will never understand about his brothers and he hates not being able to understand his siblings.

Michael looks about the market of Kolkata, the place to which they traced the archangel power and tries to calm down, but even praying doesn´t seem to work anymore. He feels anxious in his vessel, like he is being suffocated, a discomfort that pushes even his thoughts about Gabriel back more than he thought possible. Of course he hasn´t got his true vessel, which makes the situation even worse, because he constantly has to consciously hold the body together, but it´s unwise to use his true vessel before it has been through hell, which will be very soon and anyway at least this one didn´t need much convincing.

He doesn´t like the market either, too many humans, too many smells, too much noise, too less control. Balthazar seems delighted, although he tries to not let it show and Esther and Purah don´t seem too distressed either. He is glad that at least Nathaniel and Josiah obviously share his discomfort.

At least the market definitely wasn´t a wrong lead. Here the remains of a battle between demons and an archangel are so strong, Michael wonders how this could result in just a tug of the archangel bond. The way Gabriel seems to be able to shield his power is like nothing he has ever seen before.

He quickly dismisses the nagging thoughts about Gabriel not wanting to be found. It´s impossible! Of course Gabriel wants to be found, he wouldn´t hide on purpose and let them suffer all this time.

"There must have been at least fifty demons" Esther sounds impressed, even though she is trying to hide it. "To defeat them all in such a way..." "Well, that´s Gabriel", Balthazar gives back, proud as if he had defeated them all by himself. He was one of Gabriel´s favorites back in the days, one who claimed that Gabriel was alive years before Michael saw him on that street in Wyoming and got into trouble for it. Michael now regrets never listening to him, but right now he feels too anxious and annoyed to merit it and Balthazar makes him aware that even if they find Gabriel, he will never have his little brother to himself, like he somehow imagined it over the last days.

"You didn´t even know him", he snaps at Balthazar. "You were a fledgling back then. Now focus and stop talking" Balthazar obeys immediately, as if he is afraid of being sent back to heaven if he doesn´t. Which he better should, Michael thinks.

Something is strange about this battle side though. There is something he can´t quite place, something that almost mends into the atmosphere of the market, because it seems so much at home, but he can´t say what it is and it´s driving him crazy. Was it for Gabriel or against him? Is it futile to search here, when his little brother could be on the other side of the planet by now? Is it better to return to heaven?

No, he restricts himself. Just going back to heaven won´t be right this time. This is for Gabriel and he can spent some time on earth for Gabriel, even if he doesn´t like it and his vessel isn´t the best of choices. He owes it to Gabriel.

"We will search the city", he commands, even though he doesn´t know if that will help at all. "Purah with Nathaniel, Esther with Josiah, Balthazar with me. Go!"

He knows that if a human were to watch them, it would look like mere seconds of just starring at the walls of the market, but there is much more to it. It´s like leaving only so much of yourself in your vessel, that you can reenter without problems and spreading out the rest of you over a part of a city, _becoming_ the city. It feels like ages, searching the part he has chosen for himself, afraid of not finding Gabriel and afraid of finding him simultaneously, always Balthazar by his side, who doesn´t seem to be in conflict at all, bristling with excitement.

The moment Purah and Nathaniel push into the angel frequency, he knows that they have found him and there is nothing holding him back anymore. Without turning for Balthazar, he returns to his vessel in a blink and almost yanks it to the place from where the two of them are calling.

He can´t hold back his surprise. A Hindu temple of all places? This is where he is finally going to meet his brother again? It´s so unlike anything he has imagined in the short time he has been sure of Gabriel being alive, that it throws him completely of balance for a moment, but at least that explains the other presence in the market.

What in Fathers name is Gabriel doing with the Hindus?

"Let´s go", he announces to the now assembled angels and with a fervent prayer pushes open the temple doors.


	9. Chapter 8

It´s not like this is the first time he finds himself in a bad situation, Gabriel tries to calm himself down, as Kali pushes him back to the temple, with an air that says pretty clearly that while at the moment she doesn´t really know what he is or how to hurt him, as a goddess of destruction she will surely find a way. For starters she manages by putting pressure on his shoulder blades, which since his wings aren´t physical shouldn´t hurt as much at it does, but maybe it´s different with gods touching them.

It´s not the worst situation he has ever found himself in either, he tries to further bargain with himself. First there was the deal for his escape from heaven, that while it turned out quite well in the end was maybe the most frightening thing he has ever done, then there were all the enemies he had made himself first with his lifestyle as Loki then as the Trickster, both of which were just bound to piss some people off and sometimes it was powerful people and getting caught by pissed off powerful people never ends well as a rule.

He shivers thinking about the time some Norse Gods thought it funny to bind him and let pretty nasty snake poison drop down on him. (Some people just can´t take a joke) Since the bounds were made for Norse Gods and not angels it wasn´t that big of a problem, but it left him with the choice of either revealing himself or waiting till they stopped watching and they just loved to watch. In the end he decided to play dead and when they came to look after him threw them into a pocket universe overpopulated with snakes, until Odin made him return them.

People might call it unimaginative, but in his experience playing dead, pocket universes and illusions just were the best defenses against almost everything and with good defenses there wasn´t such a thing as overusing.

Anyway, Kali wouldn´t fall for either of those things, so while his brain still tries to convince him that he has come out of a whole lot of worse situations unscathed, his instincts are screaming that the current situation is just horrible.

First of all and most importantly he has revealed himself, something he still can´t believe he has been stupid enough to do. After all that time spent just to find out how to cover up every trace of angel left inside him and block out angel radio, all that time training himself to only use his trickster powers and never go for his grace, no matter how bad the situation, all it took to make him grab for it without any conscious decision and throw all his hard work away, was a bit of confusion about Michael and a few demons attacking him. In some way he has not only killed the demons with that outburst, but also Loki and the Trickster and he is not sure at all if he can ever be Gabriel again.

Then of course Kali of all people had to witness it. Kali, who maybe is the person knowing most about him anyway, which makes her dangerous by definition. Unfortunately that is not the only way in which she is dangerous and Gabriel has seen in the past what she does to people she feels that have betrayed here. Against that he would immediately take the snake poison anytime again.

And last of all there is the problem he doesn´t even dare to think about. It has been centuries since he has used so much of his archangel power (he still feels overwhelmed by it, like his own power is making him dizzy, because he isn´t used to it anymore) and it has been so shortly after his encounter with Michael. (Maybe because of it, but he doesn´t dare to think about that either) If there is any time that the other angels can find him, it´s now, but that´s now even the main problem.

The main problem is deciding if he wants them to find him or not.

In his strange dizzy state it takes Gabriel way too long to realize that they have already gotten back to the temple. Kali maneuvers straight through it, ignoring the tourists, priests and worshipers crowding the now opened temple and goes straight for her apartment, throwing Gabriel facefirst on her bed, like a sack of rice.

He scrambles to his feet, trying to order his disheveled appearance and managing a weak grin. "Hey there, I thought the sex part was over for tonight"

She slaps him.

"Explanation. Now."

She is breaking down, he realizes, even though she is hiding it pretty well. That would give him an advantage if he wasn´t dizzy and close to breaking down as well.

"Uh, I was adopted"

She slaps him.

"Hey, that was kind of the truth"

"Not very reassuring Loki, or whatever you are"

He shots her an incredulous look.

"Kali, you are not stupid, you should know what I am by now. Do you really need me to say it?"

She takes a step backwards and starts playing with the knife in her hand, an action that shows her nervousness, which in turn makes Gabriel nervous, because the last thing anyone needs for a betrayed goddess of destruction with a knife to do, is to get nervous. "Alright then, just... if anyone told me I knew a hidden angel, you are absolutely the last person I would have guessed"

"Good camouflage then, isn´t it", he tries to dissolve the tension. "And it´s archangel by the way, no point in underselling myself now"

"Of course it would be archangel", Kali mutters in a mixture of desperation and amusement. "Wouldn´t it, Gabriel?"

He just stares at her blankly. It´s so strange to hear Kali say his name, to hear anyone say his name, that he can´t quite process it and the way she just drops it casually somehow makes it worse. He knows of course that she did it for show and even though he doesn´t want to jump on it, he automatically tries to wrap his brain around how she got his real name on the first try. "Alright", he finally declares. "You win this round, how did you do it?"

"Easy", she gives back. "You certainly are not Lucifer and yet everything about you screams younger brother, so it was fifty fifty"

"What makes you so sure I´m not Lucifer?", he tries her, just to give contra in some way, but she only laughs at him. "First of all, about everything about you. Second, the devil wouldn´t hide his identity from a goddess of destruction, would he?"

"Maybe. For fun", Gabriel answers, knowing that he is talking for the sake of talking and trying not to show how uncomfortable it still makes him when someone calls Lucifer the devil.

"Oh shut up, Gabriel", Kali sighs, clearly winning that round.

He goes to pouting slightly, but is careful not to provoke her to slap him again. He knows that she wants to and at the moment he is really not keen on it.

That is when he feels it.

Michael. Some other angels. Close. Really close. Coming for him.

He really shouldn´t have used his power like this, is his first thought. His second is Finally, and he pushes that traitorous thought back as quick as he can.

He has not been waiting for this. He has not wished for this to happen. Not at all.

"Kali, let me go"

She is polishing her knife-the knife he bought her less than two hours ago- and looks up surprised at the urgency in his tone. "Suddenly a coward? You always tended to run, Loki, but you certainly are not one to beg, so what is it? So afraid of me now?"

"I´m not afraid of you", Gabriel spits back, pride taking over. "It´s just… They are coming for me, you have to believe me"

"Demons?" She actually looks a bit alarmed at that. He can almost see her planing how to defend the temple and keep him in check at the same time. Maybe he should just say yes. If she thinks she is protecting the temple against demons, maybe he can use that distraction to escape. But Kali is not stupid. She doesn´t feel Michael and the others yet, because she is not linked to them, but as soon as they come closer, she will recognize them as angels, or at least know that they are not demons. He doesn´t know if he can so blatantly lie to Kali one more time, without getting body parts ripped of.

Probably not.

"No, angels actually" Strange to tell the truth just like that. Loki and the Trickster are screaming at him. "But you can´t let them get me, Kali. Please" The pleading burns his tongue, but he doesn´t really have a choice. He doesn´t know if he wants to met his brothers again, but he certainly doesn´t want them to find him kept prisoner by a Hindu goddess.

Talk about embarrassing family reunions. They would never let him live that one down.

"Interesting" Her eyes are sparkling now and Gabriel is trying not to freak out, because a) she is really getting scary and b) the angels are getting closer. He can clearly distinguish Michael and is slightly irritated by that, because he knows about his eldest brothers dislike for earth. The others are more of a blur, one of them seeming more familiar than the rest, but he can´t concentrate on it.

"Why is your own kind hunting you?", Kali demands to know and he can see her arms now, all of them and the situation is not looking good at all. "Making enemies everywhere, Gabriel?" So the one time she called him Loki was just a slip up and she is still using his real name against him. "Maybe they just want to see me again, Kali", he gives back, with exaggerated pronunciation of her name. "But I´m not sure if I want to see them again, so let me go"

"Tell me your story"

"No time for that" 

"If they take you now, there ´s no time for it later"

"Kali, if you ever loved me..."

"Don´t come me like that. What movie do you think this is?"

"Something Bollywood maybe. No, wait, not enough singing for that. The only thing I´m sure of is that it´s definitely not Casa Erotica"

"Shut up. And you want me to let you free!"

"Just… don´t tell them I´m here. I will stay in the room, shield myself, they shouldn´t find me then, they don´t know enough about my new powers. I won´t go, just observe the situation first, so I just need you to..."

"Fight off your crazy family? Not happening! Why are you laughing?"

The laughing wasn´t planned at all and he knows it is making him sound like a maniac, but he has just now realized that his half formed plan basically is to set Michael and Kali on each other and see what happens. Probably his worst plan ever, but it sounds like so much fun he knows he won´t get it out of his mind again.

Kali and Michael.

Absolute opposites, but two fires, that can be absolutely terrifying when provoked.

Should he want to see that confrontation? Definitely not.

Does he want to see it? Definitely yes.

And it looks like he will, because now the angels are in the temple and Kali is getting nervous. This is her temple, her home and she doesn´t like the presence of Christians at all. And apparently there are more feelings for Gabriel left in her than he has dared to hope for, because he can see her internal turmoil and finally she hisses: "Alright, but if you don´t stay in the room, or if you are playing me in any way, I will find you and I will find a way to kill you slowly. You know I will"

Okay, so much about feelings, but he knows this is all he will get and just manages to get his shields up, trying to not use his grace and seeming as Norse as possible, when the door breaks open and Michael storms into the room, followed by three other angels.

If the situation wasn´t so threatening, Gabriel would have laughed at the sheer absurdness of it.

Michael standing in the door, like he owns the place, but clearly uncomfortable in his vessel, while the other angels seem like the have no idea what to do; Kali in the middle of the room, knife drawn and looking ready to gut any western idiot that seems like he might want to conquer anything and oh, Gabriel himself, crouching behind the bed, shielded, hopefully invisible to the angels and trying to be Norse.

Regular Friday night.

"What have you done to my brother?", Michael opens with an absolute lack of diplomacy and Gabriel all of the sudden feels like someone just set him on fire, because this isn´t Michael. Not his Michael anyway. This is the Michael, that didn´t listen to Lucifers begging, that didn´t blink when he shoved his little brother into the pit.

This is the cold Michael, the one that made Gabriel run and he has no idea how to deal with this Michael, he somehow never thought he would meet again.

Somehow he was naive and thought he would just get his gentle, big brother back, while Michael probably thought he would get his innocent, little brother back, even though the persons they once were both died a long time ago in Lucifers rebellion.

Great. Just great.

"Westerners!", Kali spits back. "You think you can just march in, take over and ask all the questions you like! Not with me! I´m Kali the destroyer and you just broke into my temple. Get out!"

She isn´t doing this to protect him, Gabriel realizes. She is really fucking angry with the angels for intruding and he isn´t sure which party he should be afraid for. Or what side he should be on anyway.

"Give. Me. Back. My. Brother." Michaels cold anger is way scarier to Gabriel than Kalis fury, but maybe that is because Kali is reacting like she should. He knows Kali, but he has no idea who Michael is anymore. And that just scares the shit out of him.

"Well, maybe he doesn´t want to be given back", Kali takes her shot. "Maybe he´s had enough of you crazy Christians and that is why he ran. Honestly, given the way he always runs away, when something lasts longer than two weeks you must have given him quite a trauma"

Michael looks ready to rip Kalis head of with his bare hands, but he can´t hide that the accusation has hit him the hard way. In observing him, it takes Gabriel way to long to realize that he never told Kali anything about running away. "Have I really been that obvious?", he murmurs to himself, cursing himself immediately for not being able to keep his mouth shut.

One of the three angels behind Gabriel suddenly turns in his direction and in a weird mixture of joy, surprise and anger Gabriel is barely able to keep his shields up.

It´s Balthazar!

Only that the kid doesn´t really feel like the old Balthazar anymore. Gabriel sways between guilt for not recognizing him immediately and anger that all this shit has not only affected Michael and himself deeply, but also the other angels, the young ones, almost fledglings during the rebellion.

He checks the other two angels in the room, curious who else could be there and detects two more outside, probably on watch, but he just can´t put names to the feelings and that frustrates him beyond belief.

The Michael and Kali conversation has meanwhile reached the final stage before escalating into a war and the room holds more tension than Asgard, the hours after someone actually has succeeded in getting Odin drunk, which always left everyone fearing for their lives, because a drunk Odin belongs to the most frightening things that Gabriel has seen in his existence and he has seen quite a lot.

He sees Michael going for his angel blade a second before Kali does and doesn´t allow himself time to think about what he is going to do now. The moment Kali sees the blade, this will turn irreversibly into an absolute disaster, so he takes one deep breath, drops his shields and just saunters in between them, while his survival instinct gives one last scream and then officially gives up and dies of neglection.

"Michael! Long time, no see"

He doesn´t know what he wishes for most at that moment, Michael-proof cover or a camera, because Michaels face is just hilarious!

Judging from the looks on the two angels faces, whose names he still can´t remember, they definitely wish for cover. Balthazar meanwhile looks like a little child on Christmas, barely able to hold still and Gabriel gives the kid a wink, which is responded by a large grin. He would also go and hug Balthazar, at least rather that hugging Michael, but Michael would probably deep fry them both.

"Gabriel", his big brother finally manages. "You are...alright"

"See, I didn´t torture him more than he asked me to", Kali mocks from behind Gabriel, who suddenly realizes that turning his back to Kali was a tremendously stupid idea. "Satisfied now, Christian?"

"And I hope I´m more than just alright", Gabriel grins, in a desperate attempt to drown out Kali. "I mean, I´m fantastic"

Michael looks like a gold fish and Gabriel really needs a camera.

"And she...she is..."

"She has got a name, Christian!"

"She is my girlfriend", Gabriel announces, turning around and pulling Kali to him, while two factions inside him are waging war. It´s not like he doesn´t want to see Michael or wants to embarrass him, but it´s easier somehow. It´s easier behaving like the Trickster and getting strange pleasure out of Michaels shocked expressions, than actually admitting how much he missed Michael and being cooperative.

So he almost kisses Kali.

The almost is because she slaps him.

In front of Michael.

Oh, and Balthazar, who is having a laughing fit.

Isn´t family just great?

"We haven´t decided about that yet", she hisses at him. "As far as I can see, you have still deceived me for centuries and while I can´t deny that I still like you in some ways, that doesn´t mean all is back to normal. Also, never _ever_ use me as presentation object" She actually turns to Michael after that. "Has he always been such an idiot?"

Gabriel already wishes to be stabbed and die on spot, when Balthazar saves him, by almost collapsing from laughter.

"That´s enough", Michael hisses, ignoring Kalis question. "Out, all of you! I want to talk alone with Gabriel"

"Well tough, Christian. This is my temple and I´m staying", Kali states, sprawling lazily over the bed.

Michael goes a shade redder, then grabs Gabriel by the arm and almost wrestles his little brother out of the temple.

Well, Gabriel thinks, with one last glance at Kali, who looks slightly disappointed about missing the next part of the soap opera, if I get a bit of a break, maybe I can come up with a way how this could have gone worse.


	10. Chapter 9

Just outside the temple Gabriel finally manages to break free from Michael´s grip, theatrically rubbing his arm and frowning, mostly to hide his deep nervousness, that is slowly but surely bordering onto panic. Now that they are don´t have Kali as spectator anymore, Michael probably won´t take any more shit from him and the thought of having an honest talk, about his Loki-Trickster years alone with his oldest brother is enough to make his stomach twist painfully.

There was once a Michael whom he could tell everything and who he never was afraid of. A brother who could get grumpy sometimes, but who you could always turn around with a smile and a bit of begging, who you could always feel safe around, because he would always be there for you, always protect you.

He misses that Michael, who he will probably never see again, as he realizes now. The Michael he has been waiting for all this time will never come and he is stuck with this strange version, that he can´t assess and that feels like the things that normally make Gabriel turn to plan B (fake your death and vanish), because a fight just wouldn´t be worth the risk.

But he can´t forget that plan B is exactly what he did to Michael all those years ago and how it played out back then.

He has never even seen what he payed for in that deal and stupid little angel that he was, he has never even asked for it.

He wonders if Michael has cried back then or if he was too cold for it.

And Raphael of course. Raphael has definitely cried. A mixture of joy at the perspective his other brother again soon and guilt about what he did to him too, breaks free inside Gabriel.

He has never been as close to Raphael as he has been to Michael and Lucifer, but as the two youngest they had a natural alliance that worked reliably when Michael and Lucifer got to full of themselves and in the last days before everything broke down Raphael had kind of taken on the role as older brother for Gabriel, trying to protect him from everything, not with much success, but with good intentions that took Gabriel far too long to fully appreciate.

Yes, he wants to see Raphael again. Raphael wouldn´t have changed like Michael did, would he?

Lost in thoughts it takes him far too long to realize that Michael is talking to him and when he finally focuses on his brother for one strange and horrific moment he can´t understand a word, though he recognizes the language.

With Kali Michael has talked English, but now in one of the less crowded streets near the temple, with the only persons around being other angels, he naturally switches to Enochian.

Gabriel honestly can´t remember when he last heard Enochian. Maybe the time he pushed Balthazar into the well, when the kid came searching for him. Oh, yes, he will have to apologize to Balthazar for that, that was a horrible thing to do in retrospective. Anyway it was a long, long time ago and like so often in the last days Gabriel is trapped between two emotions, because Enochian is HIS language, the language that marks his home, his happy years and he is so glad to hear it again, but he can barely understand a word of it and that scares the shit out of him.

This is impossible! You can´t forget your first language!

Can you?

"Uh, can we speak English, please?", he asks, while cursing himself for all the times he has forced himself to think in Old Norse, or English or whatever, anything but Enochian so that he couldn´t betray himself by letting slip a curse or something else too subconscious to control in other ways.

Not like he ever knew many curses in Enochian. Michael kept a tight regime concerning cursing.

Michael gives him the skeptical look he has barely gotten off his face, since he doesn´t look like a goldfish anymore, but thankfully changes back to English anyway.

"Alright, there still are too many humans around to talk, so let´s go to heaven"

"I´m not going back to heaven!"

The words escape Gabriel, before he is able to think them through and he is half surprised by them himself and by how much the thought of just plopping back into heaven unceremoniously makes him panic.

His last memories of heaven are screams and fighting and Lucifer begging.

Also he is afraid that in heaven he will find himself in Michael´s hands. Here on earth, he has the advantage, with Michael feeling uncomfortable and he doesn´t want to turn this situation on its head and give his oldest brother a home match.

He realizes that he is shaking and that he is really missing something. When was the last time he had anything sugary? The Jalebi seem like ages ago. If there ever was a time for emergency chocolate it´s now, but with Michael looking at him like that, he doesn´t dare go for his pocket.

He hates this whole situation.

"If we don´t go to heaven, will you answer my questions then?", Michael asks.

"If they aren´t stupid", Gabriel gives back, which apparently satisfies Michael enough to turn to the other angels and talk to them in Enochian, which Gabriel thinks extremely rude, but at least now he sees that thankfully his ability to understand Enochian isn´t completely lost.

He can understand most of it, if he focuses, but he has to translate everything in his head, like one does with a foreign language. Enochian is foreign to him. It´s horrifying.

As far as he can tell Michael is sending the other angels back to heaven and telling them to report to Raphael. Balthazar protests loudly and Michael sharply responds with something including the name Naomi, which gets Balthazar to lower his head in submission and obey completely uncharacteristically.

The name Naomi is somewhere at the back of Gabriel´s head, but he can´t really tell where he heard it. No, wait, wasn´t she Michael´s favorite once, like Balthazar was his? Why would Balthazar be scared of another angel? Are Michael´s favorites suppressing the others or something?

He doesn´t have much time to think about this new mystery, because Michael is back now, then leaving and Gabriel follows him, somehow glad to leave Kolkatta behind. The are in the States now, landing and…

"Abandoned warehouse? Seriously? Only monsters use abandoned warehouses"

"They are quite practicable", Michael replies.

Gabriel gives a nervous laugh, goes for his pocket and pulls out the rest of his chocolate/sugar stack. Screw giving a good impression, he has ruined that purposely with his Kali stunt anyway and he is sure not to survive this talk without a good sugar shock. The first bite of chocolate is like paradise, unwinding the knots in his stomach and giving him one real moment of peace, while the sugar hits.

He doesn´t exactly feel ready, but the feeling is lengths better. Whoever thinks miracles are angels domain has clearly never tried chocolate.

He briefly thinks about offering some to Michael, but Michael looks way to disapproving again and also he doesn´t want to give up any chocolate, he might need later. Later when that nightmare of a reunion is over and he should somehow be still alive.

Michael jumps right into it, as it has always been his way and Gabriel can barely hold back a groan. A few more seconds (or minutes) to prepare would have been nice.

"So, you were together with a Hindu goddess of destruction all that time and you never even thought about giving me a call?"

The slightly offended way he says that, immediately gets Gabriel´s defenses up again.

"Don´t talk like it´s all Kali´s fault. Do you think she corrupted me or something? Because if you think so, you are dead wrong. I was more then corrupt enough when I met her and I haven´t even seen her in the last fifty years!"

"Which was kind of a dick move", he adds after a little pause, talking more to himself now and taking another bite from his chocolate bar. "Yup, definitely was"

Michael is hard to read, but there is definitely alarm in the mix and he is so deep in big brother mode now, that Gabriel wouldn´t be surprised if his answer was scolding him for talking with a full mouth. He swallows properly, just to be sure. Not because he is afraid of Michael or needs someone to teach him manners or anything, but… just to be sure.

Nope, Michael is still struggling with the concept of his and Kali´s relationship. Wow, he has forgotten that angels are worse than certain conservatives in some respects. "So, you and Kali..."

"Do you want to talk about sex, Michael?", Gabriel bursts out, before before he can control his Trickster side. "Because then I DEFINITELY win. Are you still a virgin, by the way?"

Okay, that was too much. That was entirely too much and he wishes he could take it all back, the moment the words leave his mouth. This is NOT how he wanted his reunion with Michael to go, not at all. A bit of provocation as self protection, alright, but not just talking for shock value, like he is doing it now. Help, he is behaving like an absolute jerk and if Michael doesn´t want him back now, he kind of has a point.

Michael swallows twice, then regains his countenance, though he still looks like a six year old that has just been told how babies are made and that doesn´t quite get it yet. "I don´t see how this would be your business" He is cold again now, going for distance and Gabriel could kick himself in anger about his own stupid behavior. "And I definitely didn´t come to talk about this...topic. So..." He catches himself and draws a deep breath. "If this isn´t about Kali, where were you all these years? Why did you leave?"

He tries to say this distantly, like the answers don´t matter to him, but Gabriel can see his brother´s emotions, boiling behind his eyes and his own Trickster attitude vanishes, leaving behind something, that Gabriel is not sure how long it can last without breaking down. The answers he gives now, will decide everything, he is suddenly painfully aware of. If they can dismiss his behavior right now and maybe, maybe get happy like the naive, childish part of him always wanted, or if they will drift apart forever, closed into their respective shields, because arguing and provoking is always easier, that talking something out.

But he doesn´t know how to answer in the right way. There is so much in his past that he doesn´t want to tell Michael, that he _can´t_ tell Michael, because his brother would probably just throw him into the pit like he did with Lucifer, utterly disgusted by his actions. Loki and the Trickster were never supposed to meet Michael, let alone stand trial before him. The pressure of saying something that won´t make him seem like a monster to Michael, while also telling the truth is crushing him and reminds him why he behaved like a dick in the first place.

It´s way too easy to just pretend you don´t care, grin, tear everything down, then vanish.

It´s way too easy to just be the Trickster.

It´s deathly silent in the abandoned warehouse.

And Gabriel for once just really doesn´t know what to say.

"Gabriel?"

Michael sounds shocked, but not like he is insulted by Gabriel´s behavior like before, more like him being shocked by himself. And he sounds soft now, all coldness vanished, so much like the Michael from the garden, the big brother lost forever, that it is tearing Gabriel apart.

"Gabriel, are you crying?"

Is he?

"No, of course not", he chokes out, as defensive as possible and the way he has to force the words out probably means that, yes, he is crying, weeping like a little girl.

Could this get any more embarrassing?

He raises one hand, wiping his eyes furiously, determined not to break in front of Michael. He has held it together for so long, why does he break down now, when it is so important to seem strong, to show Michael that he can very well manage on his own, thank you very much.

And then suddenly Michaels arms are around him, holding him close like in the garden, when Gabriel had a bad day and desperately needed someone, holding him despite everything and Gabriel wants to protest, wants to say that he isn´t a fledgling anymore, that he doesn´t need this, that even if he did, he is tainted, barely an angel anymore and that Michael shouldn´t touch him, but somehow the feeling of being so close to his brother, of somehow being saved, crashes through his resolve and Gabriel just breaks.

It feels like time has stopped, like all that stands between them has been pushed aside, to allow them this one moment, they both have so secretly yearned for. Two archangels standing in the middle of a bleak warehouse, clinging desperately to each other, Gabriel sobbing uncontrollably into Michael´s shoulder, while Michael brushes through his hair with one hand and whispers: "I´m sorry, I´m sorry" over and over again, his voice chocked as well and Gabriel wants to tell him to shut up, that he was the one who ran and therefore should be the one apologizing, but every time he tries to speak, he just starts to sob even harder, like he has to work up the suppressed emotions of thousands of years within five minutes.

Nothing has ever hurt so much and felt so good at the same time.

His stomach hurts so much he feels like dying, but if he dies now, then at least Michael is there and that is about the biggest improvement he can wish for right now.

He has lost all sense of time, when they slowly let go, both red eyed and slightly embarrassed, realizing that hugging is easy, but that it doesn´t really solve any problems and that there is still a shitload of unsolved issues lying in between them, but no one wants to be the monster bringing them up again.

It´s hard to go picking into wounds, when the other is so vulnerable, so bare, without the carefully constructed shields.

Michael apparently decides that as big brother it is his job to get things going after this strange pause and he holds his hand out to Gabriel. "Let´s go to heaven now, shall we?"

And Gabriel doesn´t even know why he hesitates. Michael has seen him at his weakest, the tears and the hug seem to have washed his previous behavior away, if there ever was a moment perfect to go back home it´s now.

And he wants to go home, as he finally admits to himself.

He wants to go to the garden, roll up in the meadows and don´t move for centuries.

But still there is something nagging at him at the back of his mind, something screaming at him not to take Michael´s hand, something making him think of every single gossip he has heard about heaven during his time as Loki and the Trickster.

Maybe it was just pagan chatter, he knows they like making fun of Christians, now and then. But maybe it was more, and if he and Michael have changed so much, how could heaven have remained unchanged?

"Can I see Raphael first?", he asks, his heart pounding like crazy. "He is my brother as much as you are"

And the shocked, guilty look on Michael´s face, brings all his worst fears up again and makes him painfully aware that they are about as far from a happy ending as one can be.

…

"Can I see Raphael first? He is as much my brother as you are"

Damn it, Michael thinks, feeling like he is going crazy with guilt. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

Not now, when he finally feels like he has gotten a grip on Gabriel. Not now, when the angel in front of him, finally feels like his brother and not like a stranger, as he did back at the Hindu temple. He still feels Gabriel in his arms, from the hug they just shared. It broke his heart to see his little brother crying like that, so vulnerable, so definitely hurt, but at the same time, it felt like something he could work with.

He can´t work with the strange, provocative Gabriel, that makes him question constantly where his brother spent all that time and what happened to him to turn him into this, but he can work with a desperate little brother, that needs him to hold himself together.

Does that sound cruel? Does that make him cruel? He hopes it doesn´t.

He was so close, so close on getting Gabriel home and now his little brother comes up with _this._ He could smack himself in anger. Of course Gabriel still sees Raphael as his brother, he isn´t like Michael, who has told himself for thousands of years that Raphael is barely an archangel anymore, barely worth his attention. He should have known that Gabriel would want to see Raphael.

This makes things so much more complicated.

He realizes that he has been quiet for far too long and that Gabriel is looking at him with fear brimming in his eyes, that are still red from crying.

"But he is alive, isn´t he?"

Gabriel sounds so young and afraid of the answer, that Michael can barely belief this is the same angel confidently appearing, like they had last seen each other yesterday and casually claiming a Hindu goddess of destruction as his girlfriend.

"No", he answers, mostly because the English way of asking this kind of questions is confusing him (they should have really stayed with Enochian) and partly because an egoistic part of him thinks that maybe it is better if Gabriel thinks Raphael dead than that he sees him like he is now. "I mean, yes", he immediately asks, when he sees the look of sheer horror passing over Gabriel´s face. "I mean..."

"Michael, this is a really bad question to be confused on" Gabriel speaks deliberately slow to hide his panic, but it shows in his whole body language, from the way he tenses his shoulders, to his slight shaking and the way he glances around the warehouse, like he is looking for an escape route, should his world come crashing down. "I mean, it seriously is the worst question to be confused on. That´s worse than, where have you put the atom codes again? That´s..."

"Well, who made everyone guessing if he was alive or not these past days?"

That is not what Michael wanted to say. He wanted to dissolve Gabriel´s unnecessary fear created by English grammar and egoism immediately, like a good big brother should. Now this sounds like he is deliberately punishing Gabriel for hiding, by making him panic about whether Raphael is alive or not. And Gabriel feels that this is the case, if the incredulous, betrayed look on his face is anything to go by.

"Seriously, Michael? Just tell me, is Raphael alive YES OR NO?"

"YES"

"GOOD"

There is that embarrassing silence again, only that this time Michael is feeling incredibly guilty, swaying on the brink of a pit filled with memories he really doesn´t need right now, while Gabriel is gasping for air, like someone nearly drowned and the inevitable conflict coming up now can definitely not be dissolved by a hug or an offer to go to heaven.

"Then let me see him" Gabriel is speaking strangely low, which makes him sound more dangerous than Michael has ever thought his brother could sound like to him, especially with red rimmed eyes and a half crushed chocolate bar in one hand.

"No"

Don´t panic, don´t panic, he tells himself, don´t you dare panic now.

"Come on Michael, what is this bullshit?" This isn´t the provocative Gabriel version from the temple, but neither is it the vulnerable one, seeking safety in his arms just five minutes ago. This version is raw and bare and absolutely incredulous about being betrayed again, the moment he allowed himself to show emotions.

"What are you hiding?"

" _Yes, Michael, what are you hiding?",_ the voice that sounds like Lucifer, but can´t be Lucifer giggles in his mind, like all of this is incredibly funny. _"The perfect son, oh, so perfect. What could he possibly be hiding?"_

" _I had to",_ Michael screams in his mind, half a prayer, half a plea for forgiveness. _"He was defying me, I had to. Father please, I didn´t have a choice"_

" _And you think I´m the monster?",_ Lucifer snorts. _"Father allowed the wrong son to be thrown into the pit and you know it. You knew it all this time. You think you petty little prayers make it all go away. I made a few demons, that is true, but you…"_

"Stop it!", Michael screams and Gabriel takes a few steps back, looking at him like he is going mad. And he is, he finally is, has been swaying on the brink for way to long, but now he is falling, falling, falling and Lucifer or whatever part of his mind seems like Lucifer is with him every step, pushing him down, further and further, every step a name.

" _Gadreel"_

" _Abner"_

" _Naomi"_

" _Raphael"_

" _Oh, and me of course"_

" _And then… Do you even know how many you sent to Naomi on a whim. Do you even know who you sent? You said you wanted to keep them safe and you created a dictatorship worse than hell. Oh, isn´t daddy gonna be proud of you?"_

"Oh, screw you", Gabriel hisses and at the same moment Michael feels him deliberately pushing into the archangel bond for the first time since Lucifers rebellion, deliberately using it to call for Raphael.

" _Oh, isn´t daddy gonna be proud of you?"_

"Raphael, stay away from this", Michael is shouting over the archangel bond, knowing that it is too late, knowing that now everything will break down in front of him, the moment he had hope again and that he is unable to stop it.

He sees Raphael appearing looking around in his usual emotionless way, he can see the moment Gabriel really feels Raphael, how he searches for the most gentle of his brothers and only finds that mindless soldier, that mindless soldier formed by Michael.

"What happened to him?", Gabriel screams in utter shock. "Raphael, what happened to you?" and Raphael only blinks and asks: "Gabriel?" like the name just entered his mind for the first time and he has no idea where to put it, and Michael is falling and falling, while Lucifer is laughing about him, or maybe he is crying, Michael can´t tell, asking over and over again: _"Who is the monster now? Who is the monster now?"_


	11. Chapter 10

_It has been two weeks since the worst day of Michael´s life, the day everything fell apart, the day heaven broke in ways no one could have imagined before, the day so many angels died, the day already only referred to as That Day by the scared younger angels, who haunt heaven with empty eyes, always in groups of three or four, jumping at every sound._

 _For the first time in creation heaven seems like a tomb, every sound seems a sin, even over the bonds everything more that the illusion of a whisper seems incredibly out of place._

 _If they talk at all, they all talk about That Day, because there is nothing else to talk about. Everything that was before seems childish now, a dream bubble that had to burst sooner or later and everyone who dares talk about it in consequence seems stupid and naive._

 _The talk about the fights, the dead, they pray to Father. Sometimes one of them dares to ask about the archangels and is shut down with a hush. No one talks about the archangels these days._

 _Lucifer´s name is forbidden, everyone who even thinks it or worse thinks about anything positive related to it, is immediately brand marked a traitor, not only by the others, but in most cases also by himself._

 _Gabriel´s name just carries too much pain to speak about him. "I didn´t think archangels could die", whispers one of the youngest and Balthazar screams at him to shut up. It´s the first time anyone has screamed in days and it feels to everyone like a sacred silence is broken, sending most of them into involuntary shudders._

 _Balthazar apologizes afterwards, in a broken voice and shocked by himself, but no one answers him. Not because they don´t forgive him, but because no one sees the sense in apologies anymore. What has happened, has happened. The only thing you can do is move on and not go too crazy._

 _Raphael´s isn´t spoken out loud, but it´s more because they know that he is there anyway. Raphael is the one holding heaven together in these terrible days, establishing at least some sort of routine, tending to the wounded, caring for the young ones that are absolutely scared out of their mind. He is still there, the healer, the only constant left in a world changed way to quick. They all see him walking the corridors between the heavens, working restlessly to fix all that can still be fixed, while trying to hide his own brokenness at the same time._

 _Everyone knows that Raphael is broken and suffering immensely, only carrying on, because no one else can find the strength to take command. Everyone knows that Raphael is running against his own clock, that sooner or later he will crash, overwhelmed by the pain he hasn´t allowed himself to feel for everyone else´s sake._

 _They all fear the day it will catch up with him._

 _No one dares to ask about Michael. The oldest archangel has vanished after Gabriel was found dead and the younger angels have learned brutally that you don´t want to know the answer to some questions_

…

 _Michael doesn´t know how long it has been since That Day. It has all been a blur, switching between all engulfing numbness and memories so vivid, he wants to scream._

 _Lucifer is traitor, he tells himself, slowly dragging his fingers through the grass of the garden, where he is lying on his back, starring up empty eyed to he-doesn´t-know-what._

 _Lucifer is a traitor and deserves to be punished. I did the right thing. He deserves his suffering in the pit. Father, please tell me I did the right thing._

 _Still the images of his brother begging of him to let him go, the panic in his eyes, his horrified scream as he falls, remain burned into Michael´s brain, a fresh, open wound, that some part of him doesn´t want to let heal._

 _He isn´t actually committing self harm, he tells himself, nor does he feel like doing it. What a ridiculous thought to physically hurt yourself, leaving marks that others can see, if replaying memories of Lucifer falling and imagining Gabriel dying, sobbing and alone, a hundred times over, gets you just the same result of strangely liberating pain and self punishment._

 _He rolls in tightly on the ground, his fingers dragging through the grass again, hitting the burned spots and making him shudder with pain and grief. Alright, if he insists to himself that he isn´t doing anything that could be considered self harm, he should maybe change the clearing, but he can´t find the strength to do so._

 _Strange and crazy as it sounds, he has grown quite fond of this particular clearing in a masochistic way. It´s here he feels closest to Gabriel, starring at the bushes that were the last thing his sweet, little brother ever saw, dragging his fingers through the grass on which he died, and when he manages to calm himself down and doesn´t hit the burned spots, he can almost feel Gabriel lying next to him, alive and well, chattering about the forms of the clouds and secret messages Father might have hidden in them, even though Michael has told him a hundred times over, that cloud forms are pure chance and that Father only made clouds for the garden, because he thought they made a great mobile for fledglings and afterwards never occupied himself with them again._

 _In that moments he feels like he could stretch out his arm and his fingers would find Gabriel´s and he could pull his brother into his arms, promising to always protect him, this time for real._

 _He never does actually stretch out his arm in these moments, since the one time he did and hit a burned spot._

 _He doesn´t know how much time has passed, when he feels over the archangel bond, that Raphael is coming into his direction. The archangel bond is another funny thing, he muses. He can´t feel Lucifer and Gabriel anymore, but he has to keep searching for them, another wound he refuses to let heal, by picking in it over and over again._

 _He doesn´t want to talk to Raphael, but he doesn´t want to get up either and besides he knows that they are the only two persons in the garden, twice connected and reeking of emotions so badly, that Raphael couldn´t miss him if he wanted to, no matter where Michael went, so he just stays on the clearing, trying to ignore his brothers shocked, pain filled expression and gasp, as he realizes where the oldest archangel has chosen to hide away from the world._

" _Michael! What are you doing...here…of all places?"_

" _Leame al´n", Michael slurs very maturely, turning away from Raphael and pressing his face into the cool grass, the cool strangely soothing him._

" _No way", Raphael announces after a second of hesitation. "Michael, I know you are... suffering, but this..." He helplessly waves his hand in the general direction of Gabriel´s wingmarks, a gesture that seems even more helpless, because he absolutely refuses to look at them. "…this isn´t helping anyone. Michael, I´m trying to keep everything together, but I can´t. There is so much to fix and I am alone and I never was that good at leading in the first place, that was always you and..." He quickly swallows the forbidden name, taking a deep breath, before bursting out like a child._

" _Michael, please, I need your help"_

 _That stirs something in Michael. He knows that the old Michael would never and under no circumstances have refused a direct plea for help from one of his brothers and clearly Raphael is aiming to trigger exactly that part. But somehow he just can´t muster the energy to get up and go to his brother, not even when Raphael starts to cry eerily silent tears, sobbing out fragments of sentences incoherently._

" _Michael...please...I miss them...I need someone...The little ones...so scared...I need you...Gabriel...Lucifer...Oh, Father..."_

" _Lucifer?", Michael croaks out, this somehow being the only part on which he can focus despite his efforts to pull himself together and comfort Raphael like he should. "Why would you say his name?"_

 _Raphael looks up to him with red rimmed eyes, absolutely spooked by his brothers behavior._

" _Well...", he manages, even succeeding in calming his voice and sobbing only when absolutely necessary. "Because he is our brother of course and… and also if we go on like this more of the young ones will go over to him… and honestly I can´t blame them...with the chaos up here...if they think some order would be good"_

 _Michael stares at him unblinking and strangely snakelike._

" _Lucifer is a traitor", announces, emotionless like someone else is talking out of his mouth. "Lucifer is a traitor and all who follow him are traitors too"_

" _Also, what are you talking about?", he continues a bit more lucid. "Lucifer is in the pit, they can´t go over to him""Well, something is happening down there", Raphael answers, barely hiding the reproach in his voice. "Something big and I honestly have no idea how to deal with it"_

 _You should have known about it, he says, even though he never speaks the words out loud. You should have dealt with it. You are my big brother, the one I always trusted and you let me down. You always were the one dealing with all the problems and now you are just lying around in the place our youngest brother died, torturing yourself and I have to look after everything. Do something! Save me!_

 _Michael hears every word of it and yet his mind still can´t get away from Lucifer. He is stuck in those thoughts like a fly in a spiders net, stuck in the mantras he has carefully constructed for himself those past days to not go insane thinking about what he did to his brothers._

" _Lucifer is a traitor", he repeats, "and you think they should join him? Don´t become a traitor yourself, Raphael!"_

" _That is not what I said", his little brother defends himself. "I just said I can not blame them for their decision, when up here there is only chaos and depression and Father has vanished and we don´t have a leader"_

 _Michael doesn´t want to get up, but now he feels like he has to. He has always been the big brother, responsible for all his siblings and feelings like that die hard, even if your whole world collapses. He has to save his younger siblings, save them from themselves and from Lucifer. "Well", he announces, heavily getting up, while Raphael is looking at him with a mixture of joy and sudden skepticism. "Looks like someone has to take the lead"_

…

 _During the next weeks he often wishes he would have just stayed on the clearing, alone and far from the trouble that heaven means now. There is so much to fix, so many to prevent from rebelling and Michael at first takes control with the ease and confidence of someone who has been a leader for all his life, but it soon just gets too much for him, suffocating him._

 _He can´t hide anymore. He is constantly reminded of Lucifer and Gabriel and of what happened to them. He sees the injured and broken angels and his hatred for Lucifer grows rapidly, as well as his self hatred. There is just so much to do and he needs someone to talk to in this mess, he needs a confidant, and the one he is looking for isn´t Raphael, though Raphael is doing his best as always._

 _He needs Lucifer, HIS Lucifer, the one he could trust with everything, the one he was always closest to, his oldest little brother, the one to share his load. In the few quiet moments he catches, he sees Lucifer laughing in the garden, laughing like back when he was a fledgling. He sees Lucifer playing with Gabriel, the two of them so close, so much alike and he forces himself to shut those memories away._

 _Lucifer is a traitor._

 _Gabriel is dead._

 _Gabriel is dead, because of Lucifer´s treachery._

 _Lucifer deserves the pit._

 _He did the right thing throwing Lucifer into the pit._

 _He wouldn´t get through the day without those five sentences, repeated to himself over and over again, a mantra Michael quickly becomes dependent of. I did the right thing, he tells himself again and again, I did the right thing._

 _If only Lucifer hadn´t screamed like that, when he fell._

…

 _And then Raphael starts making problems. It begins with offhand remarks and questions, that he swallows as quick as he makes them and Michael does his best to try and ignore them, but they keep getting more and more frequent._

" _Is the cage meant to be permanent?"_

" _Do you think he suffers much down there?"_

" _He doesn´t even know Gabriel is dead, does he? I mean, we should probably tell him, but I don´t know if I can do that to him. You know how close they were"_

" _I really miss them both"_

" _Is there no way Lucifer can redeem himself? I ´m not defending his actions, Michael, I just..."_

" _Then what exactly do you think you are doing?", Michael finally snaps. "You ARE defending a traitor Raphael, don´t try to hide it!"_

" _I...Are you serious, Michael?", Raphael snaps back. "Lucifer is our brother, or have you forgotten that? To be honest, I almost regret dragging you out of the garden, I mean, all of this is hard, but what was up with you the past weeks? You punish the little ones at every mention of Lucifer, during a time when they are deeply upset and the last thing they need is punishment! You imprisoned Gadreel and Abner basically for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since when do we even HAVE a prison? And you apparently want to let Lucifer rot forever, even though that doesn´t solve any problems. What do you think he learns down there, scared and alone? How to behave better? I don´t think..."_

" _That´s enough!", Michael roars. "You wanted me to rule, so now I rule and all you do is complain and speak for Lucifer. Lucifer deserves the pit and I don´t want to talk about this anymore!"_

" _Gadreel and Abner..."_

" _If they would have just payed attention, none of this would have happened. Who knows, maybe they were on Lucifer´s side all along. They have Gabriel´s blood on their hands, they..."_

" _Michael, do you even hear yourself talk? That´s ridiculous...Ow!"_

 _It´s the first time Michael really hits one of his brothers and he doesn´t regret it. On the contrary, he is still fuming with rage. Raphael wanted him to do the job, Raphael dragged him from the quiet garden into this horror and now he doesn´t even try to help, just criticizing everything Michael does and defending traitors._

" _Go", he tells the last brother, he has left, ignoring his shocked expression and the way he carefully reaches up to touch his burning cheek. "Go and don´t you dare interfere with me again, or this was the least you can expect. I´m warning you now Raphael, and I´m only warning you once."_

 _Raphael vanishes, silenced by the shock, but Michael is still fuming. The need to punish someone, for the mess his life has become, for the destruction, for Gabriel´s death, that has been lurking in him since he stepped out of the garden and that has broken out in bits and pieces, when hearing angels talk about Lucifer, or seeing Gadreel and Abner, who could have prevented all of this, has turned into a roaring beast. It´s the kind of rage that made him give Lucifer the final push, the kind of rage that you have to give in to, or it devours you._

 _It´s all a spontaneous decision and he doesn´t think of the consequences, like he should have done._

 _Like he really should have done._

 _He calls Naomi and watches her as she appears, leaning shyly at the door frame, overjoyed to have been called to him for the first time after That Day, but also not quite sure what to make of this new Michael, she doesn´t know how to deal with._

 _Naomi has always been one of Michael´s favorites. You aren´t supposed to have favorites amongst the ones you raise, but everyone who has ever raised more than one child, knows that it is impossible. Naomi is intelligent, sweet and innocent, but she can also be a little troublemaker._

" _You know, you don´t need a mini version of Gabriel, he is right here", was Lucifer´s comment about her and maybe, just maybe, he was right about that one. But now Gabriel isn´t there anymore and maybe that is why Michael chooses to call Naomi of all people._

" _What do you want, Michael?", Naomi asks and it is adorable how she tries to hide her excitement. She is so sweet, like Gabriel was and that´s why he can´t allow here to be sweet any longer._

 _Sweetness gets you killed._

" _Do you have your blade?", he asks her and nods when she shows it to him, totally unaware of what it about to happen. "Good, you are going to need it", he says, leading the way to the dungeon._

…

 _Raphael comes over him the next morning and Michael has never seen this particular brother so furious. Lucifer´s and Gabriel´s tantrums are nothing against this full blown anger._

" _Michael, are you insane? What in all of creation have you done to Gadreel and Abner?"_

 _That is actually a good question, Michael thinks, still caught in that strange bubble that has separated him from emotions over the last evening and has left his mind strangely empty, like everything that defines him is packed in cotton wool and he can´t reach it. He had not meant to go that far, had he? It´s funny how quick situations can escalated and how narrow the line between warrior and torturer is. Michael has never done the...things he has done last night to anyone before, but turns out it is nothing you really need to learn._

 _Not if you are out of your mind with grief and rage, desperate for a scapegoat and skilled with a blade._

 _He thinks of Naomi, of her shock and her screams that sometimes drowned out the ones of Gadreel and Abner. He remembers pressing her blade into her hand and saying "Now you", the way she twisted and kicked, and him taking her by the wrist and ramming her blade into Abner´s side. "See", he told her, forcing her to watch the blood gushing out of Abner´s body "That happens when you don´t control the stroke. And I can´t control it if you twist, so hold still for Fathers sake."_

 _She called him a lot of things that night, but he never directly punished her for it, just put the blade back into her hand, while the whole thing escalated well beyond the point he wanted it to go and he felt himself going mad, bit by bit. A lot less sweet, he thought, when he finally allowed her to go. That´s good, she couldn´t have survived the way she was. No one can._

 _But he can´t tell any of this to Raphael, so he just asks: "How do you know about it?", actually sounding offended. "I´m the healer, have you forgotten that?" Raphael speaks calmly, with the anger just below the surface and which makes him sound way more dangerous than Lucifer ever sounded shouting or whining. "And now can you please tell me what the difference between you and Lucifer was again, because it sure isn´t the torture"_

" _So you are still defending that traitor?", Michael hisses, his mind still wrapped in cotton._

" _I´m saying you are becoming as bad as him", Raphael tells him to his face._

 _And Michael snaps and calls Naomi._

" _I told you I wouldn´t warn you again", he tells his brother as they bind him, Raphael´s eyes going wide as he realizes how dire the situation really is._

" _You can´t do that!", he shouts, all his calm gone, throwing himself against the chains. "Michael, you can´t do that, I´m your brother! Michael, please, don´t do that to yourself!"_

" _Stop it!", Naomi screams. She has helped him topple Raphael willingly enough, but now she has become deathly pale, her eyes shooting around wildly like those of a trapped animal. "Michael, you are going to far! I´m not doing this anymore, I shouldn´t have done it in the first place, I´m not doing it, do you hear me? I´M NOT DOING IT!"_

" _Good", Michael answers, toppling headfirst into madness. "Then go sit in the corner and watch and if you move just one finger or try anything stupid, you are next"_

 _Naomi doesn´t move. She is too intelligent to tempt him. She sits in the corner, knees pulled up to her chest, watching with dry eyes, because she knows that crying won´t change anything._

 _She watches how Michael experiments with torture on his own brother, the only one he has left and it hurts so much she wants to scream. She shares a few glimpses with Raphael, desperate eye contacts, to make sure the other one is still there, that there are persons in the world that aren´t evil and they both try not to think about what Michael has become, if it would have been better if Raphael had just left him alone in the garden._

 _Naomi prays the hardest she has ever prayed, but no one answers. And when Michael, her idol, the one she always wanted to be like, finally turns around to her and says: "You can go" and she runs out of the room, with a last glance at Raphael´s limp body, she realizes that it doesn´t hurt anymore. She doesn´t feel afraid, or angry, or tainted anymore._

 _Just numb._

…

 _And so time goes on. There comes the day when Michael´s rage stutters to an end, just as the one that made him push Lucifer into the pit without a blink did and he stands before the ruins of his world, shaking and sobbing, unable to admit that he himself has burned down everything that by chance was still standing after the first collapse._

 _Angels can play with time, a bit at least, but he knows that some actions you can´t take back, so he stumbles on into the only direction possible._

 _Forward._

 _Along the path he made for himself._

 _He starts praying and doesn´t ever stop again. He learns to look the brother he destroyed and that he can´t ever fix again into the eyes without breaking down and somehow life goes on._

 _There comes the day when "reeducation" as it is called now, becomes a normal expression in heaven. There comes the day when Naomi doesn´t complain about her role anymore, but does it willingly, even asking for equipment, because just angel blades "get boring" (At that point even Michael stops asking questions) There comes the day when Michael closes the garden forever, because it just hurts to much and forbids entry to everyone besides Joshua._

 _And it is strange how good heaven works._

 _People say a lot about Michael, but no one ever denied that he is a master organizer and nothing kills rebellion as fast as routine. There are no limits to what you can get used to with routine._

 _The years pass and pass and heaven finds a strange kind of peace, constantly expanding, running through routines, a well honed clockwork, a functioning army camp. Yes, there are stutters in the machine and there is reeducation, but not as much as one would think, as the years pass often the threat of it is enough to get someone in line. Most angels aren´t even unhappy, the ones that learn the rules, do their duty and hide their emotions, are left alone by Naomi and her coworkers and often aren´t even aware of that special corner of heaven._

 _Time goes on and earth changes faster with each century, while heaven never changes, all the shields people make for themselves now carefully in place and Michael looks over the garrisons and barely any angels have died since Lucifer´s rebellion. I took their free will to keep them safe and it worked, he thinks and maybe he should feel triumph, but he just feels like throwing up._

 _And heaven works and works and works always through the same routines, until some idiot opens up a hell gate, so Michael goes to close it and there in who-knows-where Wyoming he feels a presence that can´t be._

"You", Gabriel says shaking and through the mist of buried memories Michael can barely hear him. "You did this to Raphael. You..." He rubs his eyes, groaning loudly. "I swear, I will never make fun of other peoples dysfunctional families again, because this is just... sick"

Michael can´t really defend himself, because his guilt is absolutely infesting the archangel bond at that point and also he doesn´t know if he even wants to deny what he did. But he knows that he can´t loose Gabriel again, he just can´t.

"Gabriel, please...", he whispers.

"Please what?" Gabriel´s eyes are wide, his voice incredulous. "Please forgive me I fucking brainwashed Raphael? That´s not how it works, Michael, that´s not how it works at all"

He throws a glance at Raphael, who is mostly looking confused, but also deeply hurt, like he has finally understood a vital part of his life and that knowledge is now killing him. Gabriel tries a Trickster grin that fails immediately, turning his back to Michael and forcing his voice to be steady when addressing Raphael.

"What do you say? You come with me and we are getting out of this mess?"

Raphael looks like he is actually contemplating that option and Michael panics. "Gabriel!", he tries, grabbing for his little brothers jacket, which probably wasn´t the best idea, because attacked from behind Gabriel panics in turn, kicking for Michael´s shine, then twisting out of his grip and vanishing in less than a second, leaving behind Michael and Raphael and an eerily quiet abandoned warehouse.

"So what exactly did you do to me?", Raphael asks shaking.

"Just go back to heaven", Michael wheezes out and Raphael obeys, probably only because he isn´t ready for the actual answer to that question.

The moment he vanishes, Michael collapses on the floor, pressing his face against the cool concrete and wishing for the world to end right now.

 **Oops, I kind of turned into Michael while writing this chapter. Establishing a system that is way more brutal then you intended, during a fit where it seemed a good idea, then just going with it, because you are unable to admit it.**

 **I´m sorry. I will go easier on them next chapter.**


	12. Chapter 11

_Calm down,_ Gabriel tells himself over and over again, pressing his fists together and trying not to blow up the mountain, he instinctively fled to. The holy one where no one ever goes, because that apparently desecrates it. Well, he would rather blow up a holy mountain, than a human being, so right now with the danger of accidentally going nuclear, this is probably the best place for him. _Calm down, calm down, CALM THE FUCK DOWN!_

It doesn´t work.

Obviously.

He can´t stop the shaking, no matter how hard he tries. Every time he has calmed himself down just a little bit, he sees the empty look in Raphael´s eyes again, the look in these dead eyes, or feels Michael´s arm on his sleeve, grabbing him, trying to hold him, drag him to heaven and he couldn´t allow that, he just couldn´t.

He remembers Michael´s overwhelming guilt and the horrible story that it told. He was so eager to go back to heaven only half an hour ago, but now the mere thought that he almost trusted the being Michael has become, almost went to heaven with him, to probably end up like Raphael, the first time he said something that Big Brother doesn´t agree on, makes him want to throw up.

Raphael!

"I´ve not abandoned you", he whispers to himself and to the bond, trying to make Raphael hear it, but shut out Michael at the same time. "Just...hold on a few hours and I will get myself a plan. I will get you out of there, I promise I will"

No answer, but then again, he isn´t very good with the bond, after all the years of shielding from it and trying to shut it down. Probably he was just talking to himself right now and there was no possibility that Raphael could have heard him.

Or he was too scared to answer.

Gabriel groans loudly, running one hand through his already messed up hair and trying to order his equally messed up thoughts.

Michael and Raphael were both so different from what he remembered them to be, Raphael barely recognizable at first ( _no, don´t think about it, you though about it enough, now stop, please stop_ ) that he can almost pretend to himself that they were some sort of illusion, imposters to bring him down, maybe following him since the hell gate, like that mass of demons that almost got him and Kali on the market probably did.

The market seems like ages ago.

That was back when Kali still thought he was Loki. That was before he stupidly revealed himself, allowing Michael to find him. That was before Michael briefly gave him all the hope in the world, just to let it come crashing down again.

He wishes he could tell himself that these weren´t his real brothers and live on in what now seems a sweet illusion. But he deep down he knows it was them and he has already hesitated way to long to see Lucifer for what he was back then, he can´t allow himself that luxury again. Can´t play little, innocent brother this time around.

He still hesitates seeing Lucifer as the devil actually, especially in the light of what Michael did.

Yes, Lucifer tortured humans, but Michael tortured his own family! That has to be worse somehow, right?

He forces himself to take another breath and calm down as far as possible.

Alright, so Michael is a monster in control of heaven (everything about that thought hurts so much, he just wants to deny and ignore that problem as long as possible, like he did when Lucifer went mad, but he can´t allow himself to do that. Not this time!) and Raphael is trapped under his control, along with probably everyone else, but the other angels he saw didn´t seem that bad off.

He almost smiles for real, remembering Balthazar, who was different for sure, but not brainwashed different, but then he remembers a little moment that he didn´t deem very important back then, just before the warehouse. Michael sending Balthazar back to heaven with some threat and the way Balthazar obeyed immediately and in retrospective obviously afraid.

He makes a fist, pressing it to his thigh and trying very hard not to slam it into the ground beside him. With the amount of helpless anger currently rushing through him, it would probably really blow up the mountain and after all the surprisingly good restraint he has managed till now, that would be kind of a frustrating ending.

Not to mention that he already has enough enemies and no place to go to, he doesn´t need one of his last refuges destroyed and a furious local deity on his heels.

This thought hits a week spot. As much as he just wants to storm into heaven and take over, or alternatively grab Raphael, Balthazar and as many others as he can and run out again, doing it right now would be stupid in the best case and suicide in the worst. He knows that he is seriously messed up, he can´t concentrate, heck, he can´t even decide what he basically wants to do, other then the maybe a bit too basic stop-Michael-from-hurting-people-and-rescue-Raphael.

He needs a place to crash, somewhere where he can get himself together and the mountain is getting too lonely for that. Maybe it is because he grew up always having three older brothers around him, but Gabriel isn´t very good at being alone, always trying to fill the void somehow, even if he barely allows himself anything permanent.

He needs people, people he knows, but heaven is obviously closed to him, humans would barely understand him now and he is still on bad terms with Odin since he ran away as Loki, so Asgard would probably also kick him out.

How did he end up so alone?

There is a thought in the back of his head, that there is still one place, one person, but she would probably kill him, after the most recent events? Would she?

His head is swimming and loneliness is burning through him like holy fire.

Damn it, he NEEDS to crash somewhere and Kali is the best option he has left. And if she wants to kill him, that maybe wouldn´t be the worst end.

He doesn´t allow himself to think any further about that one. Raphael needs him, he has to pull himself together.

Moments later he is standing in front of Kali´s apartment door within the Kalighat temple. It is open to the public, showing him how much he has lost all sense of time. People shot him strange looks, but he doesn´t feel like doing anything about his disheveled appearance and just knocks at the completely smooth wall as inconspicuous as possible. Probably the first time he knocks when visiting her (or anywhere for that matter), but for once he doesn´t want to make a big entry.

No answer, though he is fairly sure that she is in there. "Rude", he murmurs to himself, shooting a quick glance at his surroundings, "You knock for once in your life and no one answers"

That´s when he senses it, a second presence behind the door, something...Norse, and it doesn´t feel like a remain of him playing Loki. "That better not be Baldur", he murmurs helplessly, too afraid of loosing this last refuge to be angry at Kali. It´s not like he never cheated on her and she kind of broke up with him today (or yesterday), so that is not really the problem, but he can´t let Baldur see him like that. That kid is too full of himself anyway.

He knocks again (Morse code for "Baldur is a mama´s boy", just to concentrate on something) and sure enough the Northern presence disappears and the door flies open quite suddenly, leaving him suddenly faced by a very angry Kali, who turns into a worried Kali trying to hide said worry, as she takes in his appearance. He probably should have done something about the tear streaks he suddenly realizes, but it´s to late for that now, so he tries a Trickster grin, that fails almost immediately.

"Heya Kali. Sorry to ask again, but can I crash here for a moment?"

"Loki!", she manages, raising her arm to either slap him or hug him or both. "What the hell happened to you?"

He would have laughed about her expression, if he hadn´t felt so incredibly bad and the prospect of getting to her bed and not moving for the next decade hadn´t taken all the fight, that was somehow left, out of him.

He laughs anyway, only it is probably the worst forced laugh in the history of the planet. "Oh, you were just proven right. Christians are batshit crazy and you better avoid them. Also I´m feeling like shit, because I just left one of my brothers in the hands of my other brother, who apparently brainwashed him for years and yeah… my family is kind of a mess. Now can you please let me in, because for the humans it looks like I am talking to a wall and I think it´s only a matter of time before they throw me out for being drunk or whatever, thank you"

Ops, that was definitely more than he wanted to say and not exactly how he wanted it to say, but she grabs him by the collar and pulls him in, slamming the door shut behind him, so hey, it kind of worked.

Awkward silence follows. There is entirely too much awkward silence today. Gabriel throws a longing look into the direction of the bed, but even he can understand that this would probably be too much asked, so he says quickly: "I can sleep on the couch" Her couch isn´t too bad either.

"You don´t sleep, Loki!", she snaps and there she has a point, but normally he doesn´t knock either and he just wants to forget the world, even for a little while. He is so tired of everything, he doesn´t even care about her calling him Loki the second time around now.

Who cares about names anyway? There was a time he thought you could escape everything by changing your name, but he was wrong about that, like about so many other things. Like Michael. Or Lucifer. Or Raphael.

Some part of his subconscious realizes that Kali has said something and forces his mouth to manage a: "What?" "I said, angels don´t sleep, do they?", she answers surprisingly soft and patient, both of which normally aren´t her qualities at all. "I mean, you are not gods, but..."

"No, no, no", he interrupts her. "We don´t sleep, that was just a stupid expression. Also, my day was really hard, so can I please have the couch anyway?"

He doesn´t wait for the answer, staggering across the room and letting himself sink into the soft pillows, trying to block out the world. She doesn´t violently drag him down, or kill him, so that counts as a yes from her.

He sinks into a strange feverish state and while angels really don´t sleep and he knows that he is awake and could be lucid if he had the strength to make an effort, he could swear that he is in the garden, only it is a dark and twisted version, with black grass and smoke in the sky. Lucifer is in one corner, torturing humans, while Michael is in the other torturing angels, Raphael in particular and Raphael is screaming for Gabriel, and Gabriel is screaming too, running to safe his brother, but he can never reach him. Eventually he bumps into someone, crashing into the black grass and he knows who it is before he lifts his head. This feeling is absolutely unique and you never forget it once you know it.

"Go on", Death tells him. "Survive"

"I can´t", Gabriel whispers. "Please, I can´t go on"

"Just remember it was you who said that, not me", Death answers, mustering him with his usual emotionless stare.

Then he goes off, into the direction of Michael and Raphael, and Gabriel wants to scream something, anything, but he is too weak, all he can do is sob quietly to himself, while the screams of humans and angels echo all around him.

After that it all becomes a blur. A mad blur including Death and Odin, Michael and Raphael, Lucifer and Father, Kali and Balthazar, Mercury and Baldur and they are all around him, telling him how to behave, but he can´t understand a word and he isn´t sure if he wants to.

"Gabriel! Loki! Gabriel, come on!"

He snaps out of it, finding himself buried deep between the pillows of Kali´s couch. She is sitting cross legged on the bed, starring at his as if she isn´t quite sure what to make of him.

Well, he isn´t sure what to make of himself.

"Are you sure angels don´t sleep?", she asks and only now he realizes that pieces of glass are clinging to her hair and dress and are dispersed over pretty much the whole room. "Because if you smashed those windows intentionally, I will freaking kill you. I thought you were an angel not a banshee!"

Oh, shit!

"Did I scream?", he asks to tired to care about pride.

"You were screaming and glowing and I saw your wings, so yeah…" Kali tries to seem casual like things like that happened in her apartment every day, but obviously they don´t and she can´t quite play around that. "Loki...I mean Gabriel, I know you now for how long? Five hundred years? Longer? There were always some things strange about you, but now that I know who you are I must say you were extraordinary good at hiding, especially considering that you seldom shut your mouth"

He tries to interrupt her, but she shoots him a death glance, raising one hand and he sinks back into the pillows, deciding not to risk it.

"You held yourself together for more than five hundred years and now you go full on angel twice in twenty-four hours. You are going into dreamlike states, you are uncharacteristically submissive, you even knock..." She takes a deep breath. "You are a mess and you know it. I know more than you would want me to anyway. Don´t you think I deserve to know the rest?...Hey, are you listening to me, angel?"

Gabriel is starring at the broken windows with a whole new kind of horror in his eyes. "So, if I went full on angel, does that mean they can track me again?", he asks and Kali doesn´t know if he is talking to her or to himself, but she answers anyway. "Well, it´s not like this apartment isn´t protected. Normally I would say, no, they can´t, but then I don´t know enough about angels and you idiot of course went back to your only refuge they know of, if with "they" we are talking about Michael and the gang, so..."

"Understood", he interrupts her. "Sorry, have to go"

She is on him within seconds, pressing him back into the pillows. "No, you don´t. It will probably still take them some time, or can you feel them anywhere near?" He reluctantly shakes his head. "Good", she continues. "Then we have some time in which you can tell me the rest"

The rest. Not like that is about his whole life, including some things that he can´t ever talk about to anyone or something like that…

He can´t talk about the warehouse or Lucifer´s rebellion or what happened to Raphael, not right now, not without going mad, but he has no idea how to make Kali understand that, so he clings to the nearest straw, another thought that has been going through his head and that he never has talked about to anyone, growing larger and more elaborate for centuries.

"I was just wondering", he says, like they are on a date in a nice bar, just chatting away. "Was our father drunk when he gave us these names, or was it just plain cruelty? I mean he is omniscient, at least in theory, so he must have known how it would all play out. Freaking bastard"

"Gabriel, that is about the worst topic change ever!", she complains, but he sees curiosity glimmering in her eyes. As much as she wants to get to the basics, she knows that she can´t beat it out of him and she has never heard him talk about his angel life before. Keeping the conversation where he wants to, but still around angels, could be less painful for him and an easy way to get information for her. And she apparently takes the unspoken deal by asking after a short pause: "What do you mean, your names are cruel? Names like Michael?"

Even though it was meant just a distraction from the really bad topics, he can feel himself slipping into a strange anger and fervency and he hurries to reply.

"It´s Hebrew", he explains. "Mikha´el. Which I am actually more comfortable with at this point, there are just to many humans called Michael around. I keep thinking of Michael Jackson and there are some pictures you don´t want in your head..." He pauses shortly, shaking his head rapidly. "Anyway", he continues. "The beautiful thing about this name is, that it is actually a question. Who is like God? to be precise. So my strict, follow-dad-at-all-costs-even-if-it-means-torturing-your-own-brothers-brother, the one to afraid to question anything, not only has a question for his name, it also just happens to be one that could be considered blasphemy. Isn´t that just great?"

Wow, that turned into more of a lecture, but Kali seems interested and he can´t seem to stop any more. "Oh, but wait, it gets even better", he continues, getting quicker, because now his thoughts are back at the warehouse, exactly where he didn´t want them to go."Raphael. Rafa`el. God heals. Well, not him apparently, otherwise he wouldn´t walk around like a brainwashed zombie, which he actually kind of is and I have no idea how to get him back from that, so I call bullshit on that one"

"And of course the highlight. Lucifer. Which actually isn´t even Hebrew, in case you were wondering, it´s Latin. Lightbringer. Well, if he meant hellfire I won´t argue, my point being, yes, of course, give three of your sons similar structured names all ending on "God" in one language, and then call the fourth one something completely different in another language. Brilliant, just brilliant. Wonder who is going to rebel, YOU UTTER BASTARD!"

He definitely didn´t plan that outburst when he started to talk, but now all he can do is press his fists close to him and try not to burst the remains of the windows, that have somehow remained in the frame during his first attack.

"Don´t", Kali says sharply and all of the sudden the energy is drained out of him and he sinks back into the pillows, trapped into a different sort of memory, filled with less anger, but equally depressing after a while.

"You know, I think it all started with the names", he says, mentally back in the garden, in that strange, busy time when it wasn´t just the four of them any more, but everything still seemed well, if only mostly because his young, naive self was good at ignoring the tensions that were slowly building between Michael and Lucifer. "Well, maybe not everything and of course there was much more afterwards, but that was the first time I saw how scary Michael and Lucifer can be, when they fixate on an opinion and won´t let go of it at any cost"

"All angels think their names are God given, but for the most part, they are wrong", he says, without even looking at Kali. He isn´t talking for her anymore, he is talking for himself now. "The archangels` are and some of the older ones too, but as you probably realized by now, He was a shitty dad and his attention span just wasn´t that long. I think he became bored with it, making a great ceremony out of naming us archangels was still fun, but when he went crazy creating fledglings, he would after a while just dump them of in the garden and we were left standing there with a tiny feathery bundle and had to take care of it and name it"

"And that´s where it started. Michael thought we should only them give names ending in -el, because that meant God and seemed to be the rule with our names. And Lucifer just starred at him and asked: "What is with me? My name doesn´t end in -el" I can still see him today, that´s what he always looked like right before going into a tantrum"

Gabriel briefly interrupts himself, realizing that the last time he told someone so much about his family was like...never. But Kali is a surprisingly good listener and he has never spoken about that particular story to anyone before, since they kept it secret from the younger angels and later it went under with everything else that had happened. Finally getting it of his chest, may not be exactly what he needs, but it is...something.

"I´m not a fan of what ifs..." he continues, conscious that he is coming to one of the most painful what ifs of all time. "...but wanna guess what the world would be like now, if Michael had just given in and told Lucifer that everything was fine with him and that of course he belonged to us and that he could name the fledglings whatever he wanted? Okay, whatever he wanted probably would have been a stupid idea…", he muses, thinking about what he and Lucifer considered a name back then.

"The point is, they had their first real argument. Both too stubborn for their own good. For Michael it was about rules and pleasing Father, so he would pay attention to us and the little ones, but for Lucifer it was about belonging and I don´t think Michael ever fully understood that. Heck, I didn´t understand it back then, but then I missed a lot at that time"

"I think Raphael was the only one who understood both parts", he continues, a stab of pain going through him at the pure mention of that name. "and he was the one who came up with a solution. Actually it was about the simplest thing possible, but it had to come from a third party or they wouldn´t have accepted it. All four of us got to name the fledglings in turn and everyone could do it after their own rules, as long as the names didn´t get too absurd or discriminating. That rule probably was for me..."

He drags of after that, starring at the ceiling and seeing the garden, wonderful nights long passed. "And?", Kali asks, now apparently quiet intrigued with the story and he pulls himself out of it.

"Oh, they got along again after that. We invented a little ceremony. Every time Father would drop us a fledgling, we would sit down in the garden under our favorite tree and Michael held the fledgling, while whoever´s turn it was, named him. Afterwards we would sit up the whole night, just the four of us and the little one, taking turns in holding him. Everyone deserves a night of being the center of attention, said Michael" Gabriel lets out a sigh, that he is barely aware of. "I always focus on the garden memories when it was just the four of us, but damn, that were some of the best nights of my life too"

"That doesn´t sound like the name argument had too bad consequences", Kali says carefully, but Gabriel disagrees, slightly shakes his head.

"No, it did. It was strange back then. On one hand Michael and Lucifer were never so close as at that time, when heaven suddenly became an organization nightmare and they needed to rely on each other to keep it working. On the other hand… they never really let go of it. Michael always gave the fledglings -el names, no matter how ridiculous it got. There are angels with 18 syllable names because of it. In turn Lucifer never gave one single -el name. Raphael and I meanwhile were like children with divorced parents, trying to please everyone and keeping it at fifty-fifty when it was our turn. The nights with the fledglings belong to the best of my life, but the discussions we always had in advance were terrifying"

"Thanks to Raphael and me you can´t tell, who named an angel, but you can always tell who didn´t. It wasn´t that important afterwards, I mean, of course you always felt a connection to the ones you named, but Michael´s favorite was..." He stops for a moment pulling himself together before he continues. "...Naomi and I´m not even sure who named her, I just know it couldn´t have been Michael. But I think for Michael every random name felt like Lucifer was risking Father´s anger out of pure spite and for Lucifer every -el name felt like Michael was trying to kick him out and those feelings all came up again in the worst possible way when everything crashed"

Silence. He doesn´t know how to go on anymore, feeling utterly spent, by having focused on all those memories again. He feels like he is back in one of those nights, sitting in a loose circle with his brothers, leaning on Raphael, while Michael offers the newly named fledgling to Lucifer as a way of making peace after the discussion before, seeing Lucifer carefully taking that fledgling and smiling down at the little one, while letting him play with his fingers.

Maybe that is why he can never call Lucifer the devil. Who could, after seeing him gently playing with fledglings so many times, as he did?

"Wow", Kali interrupts his thoughts "Ever thought of speaking audio books?"

Gabriel barely hears her. The thought of Lucifer with fledglings has taken him back to a different night, one where he himself got to play big brother almost all of the night…

"Balthazar is one of mine", he says and at the memory he can feel himself smile for real the first time that day. "Michael didn´t think it sounded right for an angel, but Lucifer and Raphael were on my side, so that was it. I held him most of the night. He may have been one of the messiest fledglings ever, but I wouldn´t have let him go for the world"

"Wasn´t he the one dying of laughter?", Kali asks and he is slightly surprised that she remembers Balthazar.

"Yup, hasn´t become that much quieter, but well, I still would do everything for the kid", he claims, maybe a bit melodramatic, but meaning it with all his heart.

They slip into a peaceful silence after that and Gabriel realizes half surprised that he has really succeeded in calming himself down. The warehouse seems far away and fledgling memories of Balthazar all the nearer. He smiles to himself, about a memory of little Balthazar resting in his arms after an exhausting day of pranking Michael (Michael found them in the garden, looked at them for a moment, then scoffed and walked away hit by a clear overdose of cuteness), when Kali suddenly says: "Strength of God", causing him to shoot up again. Damn it, he didn´t think she spoke Hebrew.

"Gabriel is Strength of God, isn´t it?"

"More like God is my strength", he corrects, just to buy himself some time, the peace gone and a new wave of bitterness washing over him "But since God´s strength seem to be running away and leaving a mess, I would stick to you version", he adds in a slightly masochistic way.

She doesn´t comment on that.

"Would be nice of you to contradict me in some way", he adds after a while.

"I´m not nice, I never was", she gives back, rising from her position on the bed. "But I could help you run away again if you want to", she adds after a short pause, holding out one hand to him.

"Run away and leave a mess?", he asks, mostly to win time, but he can´t help a little grin. So, visiting Kali didn´t turn out at all like he thought it would, and he can´t decide if he has given away more or less than he planned to, or access what she made of it, but it seems he has won her over and damn, he could use an ally.

"Some messes you better leave behind, don´t you think?", she replies and at that he takes her hand, pulling himself up from the depths of the couch.

"Fair enough, but you better have a plan, because I am blank for once"

"Maybe I do. Just...how much are you able to hurt Michael?"

Her hand suddenly feels heavy in his. He looks into her eyes, seeing a goddess of destruction and he sees Michael in the garden, in one of those nights, smiling and holding a fledgling, he sees Michael and Lucifer arguing over names, when it never really was about names, he sees Raphael´s empty eyes in the warehouse and he honestly can not answer that question.


	13. Chapter 12

Michael doesn´t like earth and never did. Well, of course he was interested in it at first, like he was interested in everything Father did and since He saw earth as so important, Michael tried to see it the same way, but he just never got comfortable down there. It´s impossible to avoid humans on earth, they are everywhere, messy and unpredictable, making it always seem like he is a step behind and can never really grasp what is going on.

In heaven he is a leader and while he doesn´t always know what is going on there either, there are clear rules and routines, created by himself over the time, that he can stick to, if in doubt. He has already tried to come up with everything that could possibly go wrong in heaven and prevented it by making heaven as predictable as possible, perfecting the system over and over again.

Those are his shields. Routines and rules and prayers. Incredible how well they can protect you from reality.

In heaven he has control. On earth he has nothing.

So if someone had told him a few weeks ago, that he would spend more time on earth than strictly necessary and stall time so he wouldn´t have to go back to heaven, he would have thought that person crazy.

But now his whole life in heaven has collapsed and the only person he thinks crazy right now, is himself.

Raphael and Naomi and so many others are haunting him, while Gabriel is standing on the side starring at him in utter disgust. Gabriel, his sweet little brother, who he has just found out is alive and whom he almost got back to heaven; he was so close, so close.

He doesn´t deserve Gabriel anyway.

 _Oh, now going into self criticism all of the sudden_ Lucifer taunts. _Bit late for that now, don´t you think?_

Michael grinds his teeth, trying to block out the voice that can´t really be Lucifer, the voice that is a constant reminder of himself going mad. He has tried to drown it out with prayer, but it just started taunting his prayers, which was worse then it taunting his other thoughts, so he stopped praying and now he feels horrible, like he is shutting Father out and Father will be angry with him for it.

"You can´t be real", he says as firmly as possible, asking himself why he is even talking to that voice. If it isn´t real, he shouldn´t answer to it. He may be going mad, but that doesn´t mean that he can just stop holding himself to certain standards.

" _You missed out on Gabriel for millenniums, because you thought the tugs didn´t mean anything and that the signs of him being alive couldn´t be real_ not-Lucifer points out. _You just don´t want me to be real,_ _in fact_ _you never wanted me at all, did you?_

Michael almost tells him to shut up, but doesn´t, officially because he will no longer talk to a voice that isn´t there and unofficially because, if it should somehow impossibly really be Lucifer, he doesn´t want to shut him up, after making him suffer in the cage for so long. He has made enough people suffer.

He thinks of Gabriel and the mere thought hurts insanely. He thought his little brother being dead would be the worst pain possible, but somehow being rejected by him is even worse. And that Gabriel has a point in despising him makes the situation even more painful.

He knows that Gabriel is right in some way and feels incredibly bad about what he did to Raphael, but still, some part of his mind doesn´t want to admit his guilt, or knows that he couldn´t live with it and is still going on about it all being Raphael´s fault for rebelling and about reeducation being a good and necessary system.

He loves that part because it makes everything easier and hates it for what it makes out of him.

Still, he can´t face Raphael right now. Raphael knows now what has happened to him – _what you did to him! –_ orat least parts of it and that changes everything. He can´t have this conversation right now, he just can´t, not when he also has to deal with the raw pain of loosing Gabriel again and increasingly also with the possibility that his little brother could have come back all that time, but chose not to.

So he aimlessly wanders around earth, switching continents like humans tap their fingers, not really concentrating on it, trapped it his own world, where Lucifer still rants and doesn´t allow him to pray in peace, which is driving Michael even more crazy, than he is anyway at that point.

He doesn´t care where he is going anyway, as long as it isn´t heaven. He briefly wonders who is running heaven right now, or if heaven is running itself, but for the first time since he took his place as the leader of heaven after Raphael came for him in the garden, he can´t bring himself to care. He has looked after everything for so long, heaven can last some time without him.

 _Aren´t you_ _supposed to be_ _the responsible one? You are just as careless as Father._ "Lucifer, that´s blasphemy." _I_ _am_ _the devil, you made me the devil and now you_ _complain_ _that I blaspheme? I_ _thought that was my job!_ Lucifer doesn´t even sound angry or taunting any more, just tired and frustrated beyond belief. Michael almost feels bad for him, till he remembers that the voice isn´t really Lucifer.

He still apologizes a few minutes later, just in case.

Places flicker by, humans, landscapes, buildings and he can focus on none of it. Somewhere some of the younger angels are calling for him. There is confusion, that is step by step turning into utter distress coming from Raphael, and now and then there is a painful tug that could be Gabriel or not. It´s too faint to locate it anyway, so he ignores it together with everything else, and keeps on moving. _Running, Michael. You are running away, like Daddy did._ If he could only get Lucifer to shut up.

And then suddenly there is one place that is different from the rest. He doesn´t realize it at first, flickering past it, till suddenly a painfully familiar feeling hits and he starts to ask himself, if he has accidentally gone back to heaven and to _that_ place in heaven of all places. His subconsciousness couldn´t possibly have done something that significant, could it?

He is getting curious, even though curiosity was always Lucifer´s and Gabriel´s strong trait, Michael himself always settled more for safety. Carefully he traces his own steps back and when he finds the place that felt different, he has to gasp involuntarily.

He is standing on a meadow about halfway up a mountain and looking over a vale, with a quick river running through it. He isn´t very good with temperatures, but even he can feel the pleasant warmth of the air, made even more pleasant by the cool wind, blowing gently through the vale. There is something surreal about how green the grass is, how blue the water of the river, how clear the sky.

It is definitely not the garden and now that he is here for a longer time, it doesn´t feel so much like it anymore, as it did when he was just flickering by. Still, he can understand why he thought to have accidentally landed in the garden the first time around. There is something similar to the atmosphere, a kind of peace that he hasn´t felt for a very long time and that he struggles to embrace.

It isn´t really a conscious decision, but suddenly he is lying in the meadow, breathing in the scent of the fresh grass. One part of his brain is telling him that he is in Swizzerland and that the nearest human being is a shepherd on the other side of the mountain and how far away the mountain chain on the other side of the vale is, but he doesn´t care about that part anymore.

He stares at the opposite mountain chain, somehow certain that Gabriel would see something in the shape of it, the Gabriel from the garden at least, since he doesn´t seem to know his little brother any more, and wondering what it would be. He wonders if this place was modeled after the garden, or if it could have been the other way around. When did Father start creating earth? He honestly has no idea, it´s not like Father ever talked very much to him.

He realizes that he is letting his thoughts drift in a way he hasn´t allowed himself for millenniums, he is loosing control, but somehow he doesn´t panic. He doesn´t even try to stop it. Yes, there are some painful thoughts and everything remotely related to the future and how he can ever face Raphael or Gabriel again, hurts insanely, but there are also random thoughts about the garden and a better time and he finally just allows them to wash over him.

Maybe this is going insane. Lying down and loosing control, not caring about heaven or the world, because it feels like everything that could go wrong, has already gone wrong.

That thought shouldn´t be as liberating as it is.

Michael doesn´t even realize it, when he begins to cry without a sound.

The sun is going down over the vale, filling it with a soft orange light, when he realizes that he has succeeded in pushing the bonds into the background and that Lucifer (or not-Lucifer) hasn´t said anything for hours.

He has spent hours alone, without feeling the bonds and without praying. He touches his cheeks, slightly surprised at the wetness he encounters, feeling numb and empty, but astoundingly comfortable. It is as if the vale had pushed back his emotions for a while to protect him, allowing him a few moments of peace.

He gets up, taking in a shaking breath and feeling slightly more comfortable than before. The problems he has to face don´t seem impossible any more, just...difficult. He can deal with difficult. Difficult means that there IS a chance of success.

"I will do better", he tells himself, not sure if he is praying or not. "I will fix what I did wrong and find a way of making Father and Gabriel proud at the same time. I will get my little brother home"

He wonders if he should add something about Lucifer, but he can´t go to that place. Not yet.

For one moment the whole world seems manageable, then a sharp pain shots through him, so sudden and so intense, that he falls to his knees half expecting to see an angel blade sticking out of his chest. It´s the bond, he realizes in a blurry haze, it is Gabriel, oh Father, please no, it is Gabriel and Gabriel is screaming, filling Michael´s whole mind with fear and pain and Michael is up and about within seconds, racing towards the scream, blindly trusting the bond to lead him, because Gabriel still is his sweet little brother and if something has happened to him, because Michael has scared him away, he is never, not in all of eternity, going to forgive himself.

To his surprise and horror, he can actually make out words over the bond. He hasn´t been able to do that with Gabriel since, well, since Lucifer´s rebellion. Gabriel has apparently suppressed the bond ever since and they didn´t exactly part on good terms in the warehouse, so the only reason for Gabriel to use it now so intensely is that either he can´t control it anymore or that he is grabbing for the last straw, two equally terrifying options.

Michael listens as closely as he can and everything inside him freezes. "Yes, alright, I agreed at first, but I changed my mind. Am I not allowed to change my mind? I can´t do that to him, he is my brother, Kali, please!" The scream that follows is absolutely heartbreaking.

Kali! He never trusted that damn goddess, -who in his right mind would trust a goddess of destruction?-, and he was right! He was right and now she is hurting Gabriel. He shouldn´t have let his brother go like that, he shouldn´t have wasted time on the meadow, he should have…

He should have really found them by now.

Confused and driven half mad by Gabriel´s screams, that are now echoing through his skull again, Michael forces himself to freeze and look around. Mexico, or at least he thinks so. What would Kali do with Gabriel in Mexico? Still, till two seconds ago, he was absolutely sure that the bond was leading here...only now it seems like it´s coming from Asia, which is much more realistic anyway. Why did he ever think Mexico?

Wait, no, Europe. It´s leading to Europe. Somewhere to the North, Norway maybe. Or Finland? He crashes randomly somewhere near Helsinki to orientate more precisely, but now it feels like Gabriel is somewhere in the western USA and Michael just can´t believe how he can be so bad at tracking, when it is vitally important.

Gabriel´s screams are still there, mixed with sobs and fragments of sentences, that make Michael feel like he just swallowed a whole volcano, about to erupt. He never hears Kali´s answers, but she seems to be trying to force Gabriel to do something, something he obviously doesn´t want to do at all.

The volcano is rumbling, close to explode into overwhelming pain, fear and fury. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he feels Raphael tugging and the angel bond bursting into activity, but he can´t deal with them right now, it is his job to find Gabriel and save him, because he is the oldest and supposed to keep everyone safe and also it is his fault that Gabriel ran at the warehouse.

"Please", he whispers over the bond. "Gabriel, please hold on, I´m coming, I´m sorry, please be alright, I just found you, I just found out you were alive, you can´t… Gabriel, please, come on!"

No answer. Maybe Gabriel really can´t control it and is just randomly shouting out to the world.

But then at least the signal should be a bit more precise, because Michael has visited every continent more than once in the last minute and seriously, he can´t be _that_ bad at tracking. Something is wrong with the signal, something…

Michael violently forces himself to stop and think, even though everything inside him is screaming at him to go on, because Gabriel needs to be found NOW.

Alright, alright, list.

When in doubt, make a list.

So, what does he really know?

First, Gabriel is screaming through the bond, which is suddenly strong enough to make out sentences, even thought since Lucifer´s rebellion there have only been unspecific tugs.

Second, according to what he hears, Kali is trying to force Gabriel to do something and is probably torturing him.

Third, the bond seems to be impossible to trace, not only for him, but apparently also for the other angels, as he has just found out by actually listening to them for a second.

Wait, that means the other angels can also hear Gabriel. It´s not just the archangel bond then. Is that fourth?

He is confusing himself now, somewhere Lucifer starts singing and Michael can feel that he is close to going into a full blown panic attack. The meadow, the peace it brought and the feeling that everything can be fixed, seem incredible far away, like a half forgotten dream.

Nothing can be fixed. He can´t make Gabriel proud, he can´t even protect him, can´t even find him and earth is just so freaking big, he hasn´t got a chance if he can´t trace the bond, he HAS to trace the bond, he has to, and someone is playing with him, he is sure of it now, the bond is manipulated, probably by Kali, and he definitely is going to kill here, he is going to kill her slowly and…

"No!", Gabriel shouts. "Forget it, I´m not killing Michael! Michael, don´t come, do you hear me? Michael, if you hear this, just leave me!"

Michael thought Lucifer taught him what heartbreak meant.

He had no idea.

Is there anything worse than hearing your sweet, little brother, who you just found out is alive, suffer to protect you, without being able to find him and safe him?

Your sweet, little brother, who if you hadn´t acted like an utter jerk for basically forever, would now be safe in heaven.

"Michael!", Gabriel is shouting and Michael isn´t sure if he is shouting for him to come, or to go away, it doesn´t matter anyway, because there is no way that he will just leave his brother being tortured.

"I´m getting you out of there, Gabriel", he shouts back. "I promise I will, just hold on!" 

The next stab of pain is so intense, his mind goes completely blank for a few seconds.

When he can finally think again, the bond is quiet, but still there and Michael follows it, the volcano inside him vanished, leaving only ashes. He isn´t sure why, but he just knows that the will be no more misdirections and he is right about that.

It´s an alleyway, like they can be found everywhere on earth, dark even in daylight, framed by large buildings and trashcans on the sides. It´s not even an especially filthy one, just dark and narrow, but Michael only remotely takes it in anyway, because Gabriel is lying smack in the middle of it, curled together on his side as if in a last effort to protect himself, face hidden in his arms, blue light flowing out of a wound in his stomach.

Michael is unable to move, just starring at his little brother and getting the eerie feeling of having run in a circle all along.

He sees a meadow, Gabriel curled up in almost the same pose, black wings burned into the grass.

And he knows he can´t survive this another time.

Losing someone is horrible, but losing someone, then getting him briefly back, just to fail him and lose him again...there aren´t even words for that feeling.

But there are no wing marks yet and Gabriel is slowly lifting his head and looking up to Michael in a last desperate effort, with nothing but pure fear and pain in his eyes, the look burning into Michael forever.

The moment he reaches Gabriel, is the moment his little brother´s eyes explode into light.

Light.

Black wingmarks burned into the ground.

Gabriel´s twisted body, lying limp in the alley.

Other angels arriving, shock waves over the bonds.

And Michael just sits there, pressing his little brother´s body to his chest, unable to even cry and all he can think is that he just promised to safe Gabriel and that he failed that promise almost as quick as he made it in the worst possible way.

…

Balthazar is one of the first ones to arrive, absolutely unable to believe what just happened. He wants to push through the quickly forming crowd of shocked and confused angels, wants to reach Gabriel, shake him, slap him, tell him that this isn´t fair, that he can´t just turn up after years and years and then get himself killed the next day, but there is just enough survival instinct left in him to realize, that trying to get Gabriel away from Michael now, would be suicide.

It is a whole other kind of shock to see the archangels like that. To Balthazar and the other angels they always were that higher authority, that you would whisper things about behind their backs, but never openly question. There is a kind of awareness, that once the relationships were different and he always remembers loving Gabriel as an older brother, but in the past centuries Michael and Raphael didn´t even seem like the same species anymore, too absolute, cold and remote.

Now Michael seems too far gone into shock to ever come back from it, while Raphael is standing a few feet away from his brothers, slowly shaking his head, agony on his face, as if trying to remember something important, like what is going on for example.

Balthazar can´t even look at Gabriel. It´s just too much.

It´s barely possible to even move in the alley anymore and in a dreamlike state he wonders what they would look like to a human chancing on them. An ally filled with completely different people, that seem to have no relation to each other, starring and gasping at a man holding a corpse. Doesn´t look rude at all.

Okay, the starring and gasping is probably rude and there really shouldn´t be that many angels in a spot that doesn´t belong to heaven, but then, this is only the second time ever an archangel died (and it doesn´t help that it was two times the same), no one is giving orders anymore and Balthazar surely won´t be the first one to go. The shock is beginning to wear of, being replaced by bottomless grief. Maybe it was stupid to believe that everything would be better now, just because he saw Gabriel for five minutes. Because of a quick glance and a wink. Alright, it WAS stupid, but he wanted to believe. He needed to believe.

Someone is pushing into him from behind and Balthazar stumbles, quickly regaining his footing and pushing back, ready to defend his spot.

The answer is an angel blade to his throat.

Well, that escalated quickly.

"Don´t you dare give any kind of alarm", a familiar female voice whispers into his ear and he freezes instantly, fear, grief and utter hatred flashing through him in quick succession. "You come with me now and there is no need for anyone to get hurt"

"Why should I believe you?", Balthazar grinds through his teeth, fighting against the temptation to just turn around and strangle her, no matter what the angel blade would do to him on the way. "You killed him!"

"That´s not exactly how it was", Kali answers, infuriatingly calm. "But you wouldn´t believe me anyway, so be a good boy and just come with me"

"You killed...him", Balthazar finds that he is unable to say the name "and now you are trying to kidnap me from the middle of a group of angels? That is about the most stupid plan ever"

"Believe me, it´s not", Kali says and Father, she sounds like she is actually enjoying this and he never in his existence wanted to kill someone so badly. "You notice that there is no one even looking at us? This is a deep pool of emotions in this place, a bit of hatred, fear and anger won´t make a difference over the bonds. And no one will recognize me. There are so many different vessels and so much power around, that it is impossible to keep track of and no one focuses on it anyway"

"I can still scream that you have got me", he manages, panicking slightly. "They will rip you to pieces"

"Oh, I don´t doubt they would", she answers casually and suddenly he feels something wet and sticky dripping over him and that bitch didn´t just… "Holy oil, all over you. And I can do this" One of her arms reaches around him and still holding the angel blade to his throat with the other hand, she lets a little flame dance in her palm, right in front of his face. "Angels everywhere in a narrow alley, too lost in themselves to really see what´s going on. What do you think would happen, if I set you aflame. That would be quite a show, wouldn´t it?"

He has never felt that helpless before. "Bitch!", he curses, tears forming in his eyes.

"Good boy", she replies, pushing him through the crowd and he lets her do it, dead inside, hair sticky with holy oil and the whole situation is just too surreal. There are angels all around and he is being kidnapped by the...being, that killed Gabriel and he doesn´t know who he hates more, her or himself for letting her.

She pushes him out of the alley, then up some metal stairs, that seem to ironically be a fire escape, then onto a flat roof, with a great view on the turmoil in the alley below and he stares down at Michael and Raphael, who seem to not have moved at all and he wonders if she wants to torture him some more, before she executes him, or what in the world…

"Oh shit, I´m so sorry, kiddo! Are you alright?"

He snaps around, completely forgetting the angel blade and the fire threat (not seeing how Kali hastily drops the blade) and stares at the figure on the brink of the roof.

Then at whatever Michael is holding down in the alley.

Then back at the figure on the roof.

Then his mind shuts down and next he knows he is kneeling on the roof and sobbing into Gabriel´s shirt, because he is there, somehow Gabriel is there and hugging him and offering him chocolate and apologizing over and over again and Kali is on the side grinning at them and he doesn´t know what to think any more and it is just too much.

"What..?", he tries, but has no idea what he wants to ask. "What…?"

"What the hell?", Gabriel offers.

"Yeah, WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO?", Balthazar screams at him, suddenly angry, because he believed Gabriel dead and all the others still do and he was just up there on the roof, watching them go insane and he can´t even begin to progress what Kali´s role could have been in all of this.

Gabriel suddenly looks like a child caught stealing sweets. "I...uhm... played a bit with bonds and illusions to destabilize heaven… and Kali helped me… being a goddess of death and destruction and all… and I think it kind of escalated…and I just got you out… also, I should probably tell you that that´s olive oil and you really should have seen your face, that was brilliant"

"Brilliant…", Balthazar echoes numbly, sniffing at the oil drops on his arms, which really seem to be olive oil, to overwhelmed to even be relieved, that he never was an atomic bomb on the whim of a goddess of destruction. "Brilliant? Seriously?"

"Okay, maybe not", Gabriel agrees, shoulders dropping and in some ways he looks just as done as Michael and Raphael in the alley. "I scared the shit out of you. Sorry for that, but I couldn´t talk to you without giving up my shields here and you needed to come with her"

Balthazar just nods absently, looking down at the other angels and feeling their grief, feeling the big nothingness in Michael and Raphael, as they gather around what Balthazar now knows to be an illusion, but still he can´t look at without feeling sick.

"Okay, right, I think heaven is destabilized, but…", he slowly shakes his head. "I don´t know, I just can´t believe you did this"

"Yeah?", Gabriel asks, letting himself down on the edge of the roof, letting his legs dangle like a little child on a high chair, so precariously close to falling, that Balthazar immediately steps behind him, not ready to take any more chances, watching Gabriel closely as he mournfully stares at Michael and Raphael, looking like he is contemplating to just screw everything and pop up next to Michael, screw the consequences.

"Me neither"


	14. Chapter 13

According to the Christian worldview, time is linear. It passes on and on, step by step, from creation to judgement day, without ever rewinding itself, marking a world that knows where it comes from and where it is going.

According to the Hindu worldview, time is circular. It goes round and round in cycles, every time passing through four epochs called Yugas, then starting again. The first is called Satya Yuga, the golden age. The last is Kali Yuga, the age of darkness.

Michael wonders if it is blasphemy to think that the Hindu one sounds about right.

He certainly has no idea where he is going and time seems to have rewound itself in the most painful way possible. Gabriel seems to weight nothing at all in his arms, but to Michael he couldn´t be heavier. The whole world couldn´t be heavier.

Last time – and the whole notion that there _was_ a last time makes him shudder – it was Raphael, who finally took Gabriel from him, ignoring his shouts, pleas and threats and lead him away into some quiet corner of the garden, where he could break down without direct witnesses.

Raphael certainly won´t do anything like that this time and no one else seems to dare. Michael has some notion in the back of his mind, that he should probably get up, if only to get Gabriel back to heaven – at least get him back to heaven in _some_ way –, but he can´t seem to muster the strength. It´s like all his energy has gone with Gabriel.

 _Oh, Father, please do something, I won´t ever ask for anything again, just bring back Gabriel, please, I will do everything, everything at all, I need you, Gabriel needs you, Father, Father, please!_

No answer.

Michael doesn´t cry. There is just nothing left inside him to cry.

He finally gets up, still clinging to Gabriel, because he has to.

 _No_ , some voice inside him, that isn´t even Lucifer – he feels like hearing Lucifer would be a relief right now, just to hear that he hasn´t killed all his brothers- tells him. _That isn´t Gabriel, that is just his vessel, an empty shell. Gabriel is gone and no one knows what happens to angels_ _after_ _they are gone. You can let go of the body, that isn´t him._

And suddenly Michael gets overwhelmed by how unfair it is that angels live all their live knowing what happens to humans when they die, surrounded by the dead ones and their little afterlives, yet have no idea about their own destiny.

That´s just one more hole inside him and the holes have become so many, it´s impossible to distinguish between them anymore anyway.

He can´t bring the body back to heaven, because the voice is right and it isn´t Gabriel, but he can´t let go of it either, because the voice is absolutely wrong at the same time and it IS Gabriel.

He finally decides on going to the meadow in Switzerland, the place where he first heard the screams and that is now forever tainted for him, but he thinks Gabriel would have liked it and it is still the most heavenly place that he has ever found on earth.

The other angels follow him, but he doesn´t care. He doesn´t see them anyway, only Gabriel, Gabriel as a fledgling, laughing and shouting, Gabriel begging him to go to earth with him, Gabriel cuddled into his arms and telling stories about the forms of the clouds, stories that Michael couldn´t come up with in a million years, Gabriel falling surprisingly still after these stories, peace all over his features as he leans against Michael´s chest, because apparently there was a time when Michael´s arms were the safest place in the world to him, Gabriel pale and still forever.

Michael carefully lays Gabriel down in the meadow, not caring if it is just a vessel or not. Damn it all, he needs _something_ , humans at least get something to bury, why don´t angels ever get anything that humans see as given?

But all in all, he is pretty sure that he couldn´t stand through a funeral of any kind anyway, so he softly kisses Gabriel´s forehead, stroking through his little brother´s hair one last time, then turns around to the others and croaks out: "Take care of him, alright?"

They seem shocked that he speaks to them at all and more shocked that he doesn´t even shout or give orders, but they will come up with something. They need a way of goodbye to and Michael just isn´t able to do anything more final than the meadow.

With one last look at his little brother, who looks like he did as a fledgling, lying in the grass of the garden, just about to jump up again, because Gabriel _never_ lay still for so long without anyone holding him, he flees back to heaven.

He has pushed away the fact that Gabriel has been brutally murdered for a surprisingly long time and back in heaven he can´t get past that thought and all it implies. He is shaking with rage only thinking of Kali and her betrayal, Gabriel´s screams echoing in his mind over and over again and he will make sure that she suffers for every second of it five times as long, but no matter how much he hates Kali, he can´t hate her as much as he hates himself right now.

All the tugs he felt over the years and never thought anything about.

That time Balthazar wanted to see him, wide eyed and bouncing, telling him that Gabriel was alive and he sent him away and to reeducation with the next possible excuse.

The way Gabriel looked at him, when he learned about Raphael.

Him being unable to find Gabriel over the bond, even though his little brother was screaming and suffering, and all Michael did was giving promises, that he was unable to hold.

Gabriel protecting him, despite everything, even thought Michael is the older one and doesn´t deserve this kind of sacrifice anyway.

Bright light and black wingmarks.

Michael looks around, haunted by his ghosts and suddenly he can´t take heaven any more.

The clinical white walls, the straight corridors, one door next to another, little heavens ordered by the names of their inhabitants.

All in order, all predictable, everything clean and perfect.

Gabriel would have hated it here.

Lucifer too and Raphael, if Michael had let him be himself like he should have.

And somewhere in the very back of Michael´s head, there is a very little angel, the first one in existence, playing on his own without being lonely, who would have hated it too.

It feels suddenly like he is seeing heaven for the very first time, with no shields or sugarcoating, really seeing it, like Gabriel would have probably seen it.

All these little words the humans essentially create for themselves, all cut off from each other, separated from the angels, labeled and put in line, the only parts of heaven that really belong to the angels being the clinical corridors, the offices, Naomi´s reeducation rooms and the prison.

And Michael stands there midst all of it hating heaven and hating earth, hating Kali most of all, but also hating Lucifer for making things difficult, Raphael for not being himself, Gabriel for running and himself for screwing it all up.

And hating Father, because he has finally been pushed to far to care about blasphemy. What kind of father just lets his children suffer like this?

He feels so lost, like a little child gone missing, who just wants to find his parents and go home.

Well, the parent thing he can probably forget by now and should have forgotten a long time ago and despite what it feels like he _is_ home, so there goes that.

Expect he isn´t.

He hasn´t been home for a very long time, telling himself that it is to better forget his home, shutting it off and denying it to himself and everybody else, making it a place existing only in memory, because seeing it would be too painful.

Well, screw everything. Nothing can be more painful than what he is going through right now. He needs his home, so desperately, he will start to bawl like a little child, if he doesn´t get it. He needs Gabriel, he needs Raphael, yes, even Lucifer and also the little angel, who still remembered how to be a good big brother and if there is a place where they still live, it´s at home.

So Michael is running, running for the last save place in the world, that was waiting for him all the time, but that he always denied to himself.

When Michael ordered the garden to be shut off, he thought he would never enter it again. But still there remained dreams, quick fragments in the few quiet moment he stole for himself, that showed them all happy in the garden again, depending on how much self control Michael had at the given moment including Lucifer or not. So he ordered Joshua to take care of the garden and kept it in the middle of heaven, just in case. Just in case.

A case like the last days, when he dreamed of leading Gabriel back into the garden, of Gabriel looking around with joy in his eyes and saying: "It´s exactly as I remember it" and of himself laughing and saying: "That´s the point"

Never ever would he have thought that when he finally entered the garden again, it would be alone, broken and grieving, finally having no other directions left to flee than forwards and backwards and suspecting that they might be the same thing.

He closes his eyes when he lands, opening them slowly and taking the garden in like a dream that seems too good to be true and that you are therefore very careful with, to not be taken by surprise, should it suddenly turn into a nightmare.

Joshua sure is good at his job.

The garden is so fresh and beautiful and familiar, that Michael´s knees give in and he just sits in the grass starring around, unable to believe where he is and that he all the time he could have just done this.

He can see them, running through the grass, Lucifer, Raphael and Gabriel, his little brothers, his responsibilities, playing and shouting at each other in little arguments that meant nothing and were forgiven and forgotten moments later.

He can also see what he feared to see, Lucifer falling screaming, Raphael with empty eyes, Gabriel pale and limp, but if that is the prize for seeing them young and happy, maybe he is willing to pay after all.

It´s like taking a walk through the past. He passes the tree, where they spent the nights with the fledglings, the waterfall, where Lucifer would always soak everyone else, until Gabriel grew big enough to get back at him, some of Lucifer´s and Gabriel´s favorite hiding places, the open sunny spots Raphael preferred. He walks and walks like through a dream or a museum or both and Joshua has really kept everything as it was and he wants to cry so hard his chest hurts, but the garden is no place to cry and he feels like he has to hold it back, because letting it out would be some kind of crime, desecration maybe.

And then he recognizes a certain clearing and suddenly has the strange and unreal feeling of having completed something, of having made a full circle and sure the circle was full of shit and he made everyone he ever loved suffer on the way, but at least he made the circle and now it is finally over and he can lay down and close his eyes, duty done forever.

Seems like Joshua hasn´t left _everything_ as it was, because the wingmarks have vanished, but Michael would always recognize this clearing and suddenly he isn´t sure how he feels about this place, because obviously Gabriel didn´t die here after all, like he thought for so long.

Not for the first time Michael asks himself what would have happened if he had just stayed here, loosing himself and leaving heaven to Raphael.

And then, because maybe time is a circle after all, he lies down, where it all started, where he lost himself after Gabriel´s apparent death and Raphael came to get him, unknowingly signing his own and heavens doom.

Michael has gone in a circle for millenniums and maybe he should feel frustrated about that, but if he has learned anything it´s that leaving and coming back to the same place is never the same as never leaving.

"I could use a Satya Yuga now", he tells no one in particular committing maybe his greatest blasphemy ever, but no one answers. Well, it´s not like his own father answers him, so he can´t really expect anyone else to, especially a mythology he is definitely going to kill a main goddess of.

He closes his eyes, shutting out the world for just a few moments, trying to gather a few good memories of his brothers and getting lost in them, hoping to never find his way back.

When he opens his eyes again, Raphael is standing over him and Michael almost laughs out loud despite himself and despite everything. Sometimes the only things you can do are laugh or cry and this is one of this moments, when the world is just too absurd, while at the same time making sense in a twisted way.

"Didn´t expect you here for some time", he tells Raphael, his voice sounding strange and foreign to himself. "Aren´t you supposed to leave me alone for a few days? Try to rule heaven or something like that?"

Raphael just stares at him, clearly not getting the reference to their own lives and Michael doesn´t know why he expected him to. He destroyed Raphael and he couldn´t even admit it for an eternity. Can´t even really admit it now. So he just remains where he is, looking up at his little brother and wondering if he should get up and take control in some way, at least ask Raphael what he is doing here and if he even knows what this place is, but he feels like he is frozen to the ground and just doesn´t have the strength to free himself.

It´s a strange moment and later he couldn´t have said how long it lasted, it´s one of those moments, that seem to take place outside of time. The bond between them is mostly swallowed by the enormous grief and guilt radiating from Michael, but there is also grief from Raphael, unfocussed like he isn´t exactly sure what he is grieving just that it hurts, and underneath it a mixture of confusion, anger, fear and … determination? No, that can´t be, Michael scolds himself. He hasn´t felt more than dutiful determination from Raphael in millenniums and what he seems to feel now is something entirely else. Something wild, something desperate, like Raphael is about to explode from the inside.

Maybe it is just the garden and the memories that are messing with Michael´s mind, but here and now, after learning that his oldest brother brainwashed him for defending another brother and finding his youngest, barely remembered brother again, just to loose him a day later, Raphael seems more alive, more like the person he once was, than he has seemed since that day after Michael and Naomi went for Abner and Gadreel. It´s like he has been broken long ago and the recent happenings have burned him, accidentally melting some of the bits back together, twisted and blackened, but finally in one piece again.

And Michael is suddenly very aware of everything he ever did to Raphael and that he himself is helplessly lying on the ground right now, with Raphael standing over him, in a twisted parody of all the times Michael didn´t allow Raphael take a seat, while taking one himself, in an act of stupid, unnecessary power play, that still went on and on forever, undermining Raphael´s self esteem on a daily basis.

I´m sorry, Michael wants to say, but because he has always been a jerk, hurting his brothers and because some stupid part of him still believes in power play what comes out is: "Isn´t that the part where you tell me that you need my help?"

Raphael just stares at him, so deadpan it is getting scary and then, surprising Michael and himself equally, he suddenly bursts out: "I don´t. _You_ need _my_ help"

For one moment none of them knows how to react, so they just don´t.

Then the bond goes mad, Michael being overwhelmed by anger, because how does Raphael DARE, he is just a mindless soldier, nothing more, and fear and shock from Raphael´s side, who is clearly cursing himself, fearing what Michael will do to him now, about to fall to his knees and apologize, but then the strange broken determination in Raphael returns and he just stands there, dying with fear inside, but not apologizing and that totally throws Michael off the last rails he still relied on.

He just stares at Raphael and somewhere behind the mindless soldier there seems to be his little brother and then Raphael takes a deep breath, offering his hand to Michael in the stupidest, most self-defying and by far the bravest peace offering, that Michael has ever seen.

Only it´s even more than a peace offering. Michael has tortured Raphael, taken his memories, absolutely destroyed him from the inside and here Raphael stands, defying fear that has been burned and carved into him, not only offering peace, but help, revenge for Gabriel in some way, just because he saw Michael suffering so much with Gabriel gone.

The only part of Michael´s brain that is still functioning somewhat rationally remarks that Raphael always has been strongest in a crisis, calming Michael down when everything became too much and Lucifer and Gabriel when they threw their tantrums, trying to shield Gabriel from the happenings around Lucifer´s rebellion and not to forget, freaking running heaven on his own, right after having literally lost everything. Raphael is the one who, when everyone is down and waiting for someone else to save the day, get up after a time and just does it, because clearly no one else will, and apparently nothing in the world can beat this trait out of him.

Every other part of Michael´s brain is just screaming that there is no way in all of creation, that he deserves Raphael. If there could ever be a moment of him feeling more undeserving of his brothers, he really can´t imagine it right now.

Raphael´s desperate determination is starting to crumble quickly, not being able to take the tension, pure fear taking over again and processing into the direction of full blown panic. He slowly pulls back his hand, unsure how to retreat best.

And then Michael starts to cry.

It´s childish, really, but the moment Raphael gives up on him, every wall inside him just bursts under the pressure, every shield just collapses and he is sitting on the ground in the garden, bawling his eyes out in front of Raphael, who is absolutely frozen in shock and has no idea how to deal with the situation. Escalating in this way.

All his instincts are screaming to leave Michael alone and run, but there is one little voice saying that it´s just not right to leave Michael alone like this and that he should do something, anything, and while Raphael is still oblivious that he was a healer once, on some level, on the level of this voice, he still is.

Michael is completely lost in his agony, for once not caring that Raphael sees him, that he is the oldest and can´t have break downs, because he just fully realized that Gabriel is dead and Raphael is all he has left.

Dead.

It´s the first time he has allowed himself to even think that.

Dead, not gone, or some other sugarcoated expression, that makes it sound like Gabriel is just around the corner and could come back any time.

Gabriel is dead, for real this time and Michael doesn´t think he will ever be able to cope with that.

"Gabriel is dead", he sobs out, to get it over with, to make it real, because it had to become real sooner or later and Raphael who still has absolutely no idea how to react, apart from not running away, tenses and tries to say something that doesn´t sound stupid, but all that comes out is: "I know", which really isn´t very comforting, but somehow it is for Michael, because he is just glad that someone answers, that someone is still there, that Raphael talks even though he isn´t asked to and that makes him sob even harder, which in turn confuses Raphael even more and the situation is getting really awkward, till Michael tells Raphael through his tears to freaking sit down and then they just sit in the grass, two meters apart, Michael sobbing relentlessly, while Raphael stares at his feet and it´s the most comfortable uncomfortable situation of all time.

"I´m sorry", Michael finally tries to apologize. "Sorry for everything, sorry for breaking down, sorry for..."

"Stop it", Raphael interrupts him and Michael is feeling extremely irritated and strangely happy at the same time, because his brother just interrupted him, which is what he has been trying to provoke for years, but now that Raphael does it, he of course doesn´t like being interrupted and it´s all so confused, but really, what isn´t at this point?

"Michael", Raphael begins and Michael can feel that he still fears to be punished for all of this. "I...I still don´t really know what´s going on and what you did to me and I don´t think I can ever forgive you. But I think if you fall apart, heaven falls apart and besides...I feel like I have to do something for Gabriel. I mean, I don´t remember much about him, but everything I do remember...I´m talking like an idiot, am I not?"

"Not more than me usually", Michael replies and then he hugs Raphael out of an impulse and he feels his brother shrinking back, trying to escape, but he doesn´t let go and Raphael calms a bit after a time, more underlying fear than panic welling through the bond now.

Alright, Michael thinks. I threw one of my brothers into the pit, got another one killed and the third one is so afraid of me he tenses when I touch him and he will probably never forgive me, which he shouldn´t considering what I did, but at least we have some kind of peace and both want revenge for Gabriel. Oh, and Lilith is still running around and my vessel is going to hell, which means we can start the apocalypse. Get along, kill Kali, start the apocalypse. Well, that is a plan, at least.

Then he lets Raphael free, feeling incredibly guilty again, when he sees his brothers face, because while Michael really needed this hug, for Raphael it was apparently close to assault, even though he is trying to hide his strong reaction.

"Sorry", Michael murmurs. "I won´t do it again, if you don´t want to" Raphael just nods, not really believing it, but having lost all his strength to argue. "Alright", he says, seeming much more like before he came to the garden, which makes Michael want to slap himself. "Can I go now?"

"Wait a moment, just a moment", Michael croaks out. "Can you remember the garden?"

Alright, maybe memory is not the best topic to begin gaining Raphael´s trust, but his little brother actually takes the bait, looking around and answering almost shyly: "Not much, just a bit. I like it though. It´s beautiful"

"Yes", Michael sighs, feeling that Raphael is beginning to relax a little and hoping that maybe, just maybe they can stay like that for a bit, talking about good things and finding a little peace in the garden, that has never stopped being their home. "It definitely is"

And for once, just this once, they are lucky and the moment lasts.


	15. Chapter 14

Gabriel isn´t sure how they get away from the edge of the roof in the end, probably through Kali dragging both him and Balthazar, although he could swear that Balthazar was dragging him at some point, as well as that he was the one dragging Balthazar. They don´t get very far anyway, collapsing into a total mess while still on the roof, "total mess" maybe being the best and only word to describe their situation as a whole.

"Actually this would be the best moment to attack", Kali suddenly says, breaking the silence. "Kill Michael now, he will never see it coming and the others will be too surprised to react in time"

Gabriel just stars at her, with the feeling that something blazing hot is climbing up his throat and knows he won´t endure much more without throwing up. Yes, Michael is a monster that needs to be punished for what he did to Raphael and all of heaven. Yes, he doesn´t need any angels on his heels right now and faking death his longest tested and approved measure to shake people off. Yes, he needs to save heaven in some way and to do that, he needs to destabilize it first, otherwise Michael´s control would be too strong.

But still, looking at Michael in so much pain, so completely destroyed, the whole thing just makes him feel sick and he can´t help but think that Kali pushed him too far too fast. Made him deliver it too extreme. He remembers himself asking: "Are you sure it has to be that brutal?" and Kali taunting: "Are you able to hurt him, or not?" The memory feels like it takes place centuries ago, even though it has barely been one hour.

One hour isn´t close to being enough time for deciding a measure as radical as this.

"Earth to Gabriel. Anybody home?"

It´s risky, but he has to do this, has to see what he did to his brothers one more time. Slowly he goes back to the edge of the roof, looking down at Michael, at the illusion, that has to be kept upright by Kali, because otherwise it would have collapsed by now as shaky as Gabriel´s concentration is, at Raphael, at all the other angels, feeling nothing coming from them but confusion, pain and anger.

Then he turns to Balthazar, sitting on the roof unmoving, exactly where Kali dropped him after pulling him back from the edge and feels the exact same emotions radiating from his little brother in a wild mess. They are mixed with distrust and the feeling of being betrayed, which is getting stronger by the moment, as Balthazar slowly comes out of shock and his thoughts begin to clear.

Well, shit. He is pretty sure, he will go insane if Balthazar is getting angry at him now, but he can´t really deny that his brother would have every right to. After all the olive oil, really blew through every No-Go-barrier ever.

"Gabriel, seriously, do you want me to do it for you, or what? It was part of the plan, remember?"

Yes, it was and he hadn´t even been drunk or stoned when he agreed to killing his brother. There goes that excuse.

Balthazar is just watching everything with wide eyes and Gabriel feels how inside him the Trickster awakes to protect him from his conscience and painful stuff like that, pushing aside everything that is Gabriel and trying to take control, or more likely already having it, because what he just pulled to hurt Michael was a textbook Trickster move. And the Trickster will go on now and finish Michael off, because the Trickster doesn´t care. Being the Trickster doesn´t hurt, that´s why he always liked it. The Trickster can do anything and walk away just shrugging it off.

Kali has stepped beside him and he hasn´t even noticed. "Seriously", Kali says again, her voice sounding surprisingly – and in some way creepily- soft. "And this point it would be a mercy to kill him"

The Trickster agrees with her. Loki too, after a short moment of hesitation. And Gabriel is drowning in sudden panic, turning to Balthazar for support, because he just realized he can neither kill Michael, nor let someone else do it, because Michael is his _brother_ for crying out loud, but Balthazar just shrugs like he is still struggling to make sense of any of this and says: "Feeling what he feels, I can´t really disagree with her, can I?"

The easiest way, would be just to be the Trickster and be done with it. Give in and don´t think about the past or future consequences, go on living the way he has been living since he ran as Loki.

But he can´t do that. Because handing heaven to the Trickster would in some ways be worse than leaving it with Michael. He needs to be Gabriel for this, even if if every second burns him inside.

"It´s enough Kali. Leave him alone"

She raises an eyebrow, shooting him a strange look and he grabs her arm with one hand, reaching for Balthazar with the other.

"We are leaving. Doesn´t matter where to, let´s just go!"

Kali winds out of his grip with startling ease, giving him her next-time-you-are-freaking-dead-glare, but at least she doesn´t continue the topic of killing Michael or not.

And while Gabriel shoots one last look at Michael, his brother´s numbness and deep, deep pain beneath it radiating through him even though Gabriel is suppressing the bond with all his force, he wonders if his angel part just made the cruelest decision of them all, leaving someone to suffer who Loki and the Trickster would long have mercy killed.

"You have a house in Bali right at the beach and you chose to live in a temple in Calcutta?" Balthazar has woken from his stasis, trying to take in the almost comically white beach and the calm turquoise sea behind it, the idyllic nature where they just landed forming a completely surreal contrast to the dark and pain-filled alleyway they just left. "I mean, what the hell is wrong with you, this place is perfect!"

"And not really hers", Gabriel reveals, an involuntary grin stealing on his face. The complete atmosphere change has also scrambled with him, making the surreal beautiful beach seem like a dream, that can not possibly exist in the same world as Michael´s grief. On some level he is feeling guilty for automatically relaxing, but mostly he just wants to spent a day or a week at the beach, screw heaven, screw responsibilities, screw everything.

"Well, the owners are devout enough and they only use it once a year for a few days", Kali retorts, holding open the door of a neat, but obviously sinfully expensive little house. "Also I kind of have a right to this island. More than 90 % of the people here are Hindus. Well, not counting the tourists obviously, they really are annoying"

"Wait!", Balthazar whines. "Why do you get places like Bali and we get Europe and America? That´s so unfair!"

"We´ve also got Mauritius and the Caribbean", Kali grins, clearly having fun.

"What…? Gabriel, I want to convert"

"Nope" Gabriel shakes his head, trying to hide his smile at seeing Balthazar behaving so much like the fledgling he remembers "Converting never ends well, mark my words"

"Well, you didn´t have to chose the Norse", Kali gives back. "I mean, when I think about it now, you could have chosen anything and you chose freezing Europeans"

"You converted to _what_?"

"Uh, yeah, Norse mythology", Gabriel tells Balthazar, who is looking at him, like he just grew a second head. "I was young and needed the money" Balthazar slowly shakes his head, looking like reality is starting to dribble in again and it is way more crazy than anticipated "No, seriously, I was Loki and don´t say anything against Loki, I quite liked being him"

"I quite liked you being him", Kali quips in, the smile on her face not really leaving room for interpretation on what she is talking about.

"Yeah, thanks", Gabriel answers distracted by the sudden pain and confusion on Balthazar´s face. "Hey kiddo, are you okay? I know it´s a bit much right now, but you´ll get used to it"

"No, I´m fine", the younger angel answers, batting away the hand Gabriel just placed on his shoulder. "Just waiting to wake up in heaven to someone telling me I hit my head really hard, but whatever"

"That´s the normal reaction people have when they meet him the first time", Kali informs, ignoring Gabriel´s hissed demands to shut her mouth. "Are you coming in now, or are we doing a beach party?"

Both angels hesitate for a moment, Balthazar looking pleadingly at Gabriel, then Gabriel sighs, dragging Balthazar with him into the house, ignoring his brother´s weak protests. "Beach party only after we´ve sorted out heaven. Damn it, why do _I_ have to be the adult now?"

Five minutes later the house is inspected from bottom to top, the first scramble over the TV remote has taken place, Gabriel has claimed one of the divans and Kali the other, leaving Balthazar sulking in an armchair that is probably more comfortable than the divans but whatever and the little coffee table between the divans is absolutely littered with chocolate bars and other sweet sins.

"Not that I´m complaining", Kali remarks, switching through some Bollywood channels, that make Balthazar groan and mutter something about Titanic and horrible singing. "But aren´t we kind of trying to take over heaven?"

"We are and I am trying to forget it for a few minutes, but you are ruining my break", Gabriel complains, methodically rumbling through the sweets heap on the coffee table and claiming the best bits. He isn´t really keen on leaving this dreamlike state of pretending they have all the time in the world and that it is totally reasonable to destabilize heaven, by putting everyone through massive agony and then just leave to Bali for holidays, but he knows he can´t push reality back forever and something is already nagging at him. "Wait, how safe are we here? Michael can get pretty radical and he certainly wants you dead now"

"Come on, it´s not the first time I have used this house as a refuge", Kali replies switching off the TV with a sigh. "Not even the first time we are using it together. "It´s protected enough and believe me, I won´t be killed by some Christian"

"Yeah, I know, everyone always underestimates angels, but that is kind of my point..." Gabriel suddenly falls quiet, turning his head and trying to take in as much of his surroundings as possible without having to rise from the divan and thereby giving it up to Balthazar. "Wait, am I the only one feeling something Norse?"

"Says the one I thought was a Norse God for ages", Kali answers, suddenly snappy. "It´s nothing, you are the only Norse thing in here"

Gabriel shrugs, deciding that he doesn´t need any more worries and certainly won´t try to find new ones, if the don´t come smashing in the door. Balthazar doesn´t seem too worried either, so he decides that maybe it is time to focus on something useful again for a change.

"So, Michael is still around"-Kali scoffs at that- "but he shouldn´t do too much right now. I´ve now got the coming-back-from-the-dead-effect and intend to use that at full cost. There should be people following me if I turn up again, the thing is just… The thing is, I´m not sure if I want a war and if I start to rally this could become one. Heck, I have kept out of this for so long and I never even wanted to rule heaven. But I can´t leave Michael to torture any more people, so I had and HAVE to do something … I´m a mess, aren´t I?"

"You never planned this whole thing out, didn´t you?", Balthazar asks, not even waiting for an answer. "Great, just great"

"Hey, I wanted you out and I got you out", Gabriel defends himself.

"Yeah, just..." Balthazar takes a breath, starring at the chocolate bar he just snapped from the coffee table, as if he can´t quite remember how it ended up in his hand. "Gabriel, you hurt people, including me, to eventually make them listen to you and that… sounds way too much like Michael for my taste"

The last remains of their short-lived dreamworld puff into smoke. Bali suddenly doesn´t feel that much different from the alleyway and the blazing feeling in Gabriel´s throat returns as intense as if someone just poured liquid steel into his mouth. The two angels just stare at each other, Gabriel overwhelmed by the sudden urge to hit Balthazar and Balthazar looking back with a strange kind of resignation in his eyes. Like he has been in situations of this kind before, getting punished for speaking his mind and that thought is enough to make Gabriel snap out of his rage, sinking back into the divan.

"Sorry, Balth", he mumbles, pressing one hand against his forehead. "I wouldn´t have done it, I´m not like Michael, I´m not like my brothers, I was just...Shit, I´m sorry"

Balthazar just nods, trying to relax back into his armchair, but still eying the archangel warily, more out of habit then of direct mistrust again Gabriel, but it is still breaks Gabriel´s heart.

"Uh, do you boys want to have the house for yourself?", Kali suddenly asks, surprising both angels.

"What, you are already having enough soap opera? That´s not very much like you Kali", Gabriel says, but he is kind of glad to get her to go away without throwing her out – which probably wouldn´t turn out very well anyway - and he really needs to take care of Balthazar now, before things can get bad between them. 

"I only like the drama part of soap operas", Kali declares "and this will turn into the cheesy part way to quickly, so I´m at the beach. See you later, boys"

"She watches _Bollywood_ ", Balthazar bursts out, the moment Kali has vanished, while throwing himself on her divan and jamming the TV remote into his pocket "and she has the nerve to say she doesn´t like cheesy stuff?"

Gabriel just shrugs. "I think she mostly did it to annoy you, but then again it´s kind of an epidemic with the Hindu. You won´t believe what kind of stuff Ganesha watches… Anyway, how cheesy do you want our talk?"

"I´m not sure if she is even right about it getting cheesy at all", Balthazar replies, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "I don´t trust her and I´m not sure why _you_ do"

"Good, never trust her completely, she can be pretty mean. But she never betrayed me the hard way and she won´t start now. We had something going on for quite some time, trust me, we will be fine"

"So she had quite some time to get angry at you?"

"Yeah, probably. Okay, you better take care" Gabriel forces a laugh, mentally already preparing himself to ask the question that has been pushing at the back of his mind ever since he heard what Michael did to Raphael. To be honest, he doesn´t really want to know the answer to it, doesn´t know if he can take the truth, but he also knows that he just _has_ to know. Has to know how much Michael did to the younger angels, in particular to the one sitting in front of him, has to know what Balthazar had to go through, while he himself has an easy life as Loki, even if he can never face himself again after hearing about it.

"Uhm, this is a really bad change of subject, but I can´t for the hell of it come up with a good way to start this conversation and honestly I´m afraid of having it, but… Did Michael… to you… did he ever…?"

"You mean if I was in reeducation?" Balthazar looks nervous and is fiddling with a pillow, but he clearly has been expecting that question. "With my inability to keep my mouth shut? What do you think?"

"He calls it _reeducation_?" Gabriel asks incredulous and for one moment he doesn´t regret at all what he did to Michael. His brother is a monster, deserving all of it and a thousand times worse.

"Balthazar, that´s like rule number one! If a country has "democratic" in it´s name it certainly is a dictatorship and if someone says "reeducation" or some other fancy word, that sounds like brainwash the second time you about it, you can bet it´s self righteous torture. In both cases you run and never look back, got that?" 

Balthazar is not looking into his eyes, still very interested in the pillow. "Are you just giving me shit for being trapped in what basically is a dictatorship for millenniums?", he asks, voice faltering and Gabriel recoils as if Balthazar had physically punched him in the guts.

"That´s not… Balthazar, I would never do that! I´m not angry at you, I´m just angry at the whole situation, at Michael, at Father… Shit, what did they do to you? How many times…?"

He still can´t say it, doesn´t even dare to imagine it. Balthazar was so young during Lucifer´s rebellion, still so much like a fledgling and the thought of having just left him, having left them all with a monster, makes him want to curl up and cry for eternity.

Balthazar still isn´t looking at him and it is driving Gabriel crazy. The younger angel also takes his time to answer, toying with the pillow a bit more, then throwing it through the room with considerable force and pulling his knees up to his chest, like a frightened little child.

"I don´t know", he finally says, very softly. "The funny thing about reeducation is… if they are doing it right, you won´t remember a thing. Not what you did, not that you even _were_ in reeducation and if you really screwed up, not a few other things from your past, that you really would have liked to remember. So you can´t really tell. I mean, you guess of course. There is something in the way people look at you and how you are struggling, feeling confused, like you just had a huge blackout… The uncertainty is maybe the worst thing about it. When you spent days wondering whether you were just punished horribly or whether you are just forgetting things like normal and your thoughts about reeducation are paranoia and no one will answer your questions... There are no scars, no way to know and you feel yourself slowly going insane" He shakes his head rapidly, snapping out of some kind of trance. "I had that feeling four times. Most horrible thing that ever happened to me"

"Four times", Gabriel croaks out, because he honestly has no idea what to say to the other stuff. Norse gods can be pretty rough and some of their jokes really don´t qualify as jokes any more, but he has never remotely suffered something like what Balthazar is describing. Being pushed around a bit is absolutely ridiculous against the panic and self doubt his little brother must have suffered every single time, all alone with his fear.

Outside the sun shines brightly, postcard wetter, a light-colored house on a perfect beach.

It is sickening, really.

Balthazar gives the least convincing shrug ever. "Yeah, so maybe they got me four times. Maybe they got me two times and I´m just paranoid. Maybe they got me fifty times and I am naive. I only know of one time for sure"

"So you remember it?" Gabriel seriously has no idea anymore if that is good or bad. If you remember, at least you know there _was_ something and can´t slide into so much self doubt and uncertainty. You know you aren´t going mad. But at the same time, his little brother remembering torture is of course the absolutely last thing he wants.

Balthazar shakes his head. "Not the reeducation and I´m glad about that. One of the times I wasn´t sure, Castiel came to me after a while and he remembered parts of what we did and when he told me, it started coming back to me too. Apparently we ran into quite some trouble together in old Egypt..."

He interrupts himself, startled by a groan from Gabriel. "No, please, not Castiel too! No offense Balth, but how could you pull Castiel into any of this? You should have told him off, no one should have ever allowed the little ones to get hurt..."

"Gabriel", Balthazar interrupts him, looking straight at him for the first time since they began talking about this horrid topic. "Castiel isn´t that little any more. And I couldn´t tell him off, because _he_ pulled _me_ into it"

That totally takes Gabriel by surprise. He knows of course that he has missed a lot and that everyone in heaven has had to grow up or go under, but…

"Wait, we _are_ talking about the same Castiel, aren´t we? Little Cassie? The one who could never hurt anyone and would lie in the garden for hours, watching bees of all things, then telling everyone about them for just as many hours and no one could ever throw him out or interrupt him, because it was just too adorable? Little Cassie pulled you into rebellion?"

"I know", Balthazar replies. "Turns out he can be pretty scary when he puts his mind to something"

"Like "Holy shit my puppy just went nuclear!"-scary?", Gabriel asks, still not quite able to imagine it.

Balthazar gives a quick laugh, then goes silent, a deep shadow passing over his face. "We shouldn´t make fun of him. He really grew up, well, I guess he had to, and he is maybe the one who tried the hardest to save us all. I have no idea how he does it, but they drag him to reeducation and a few months later it´s like they never did it. He just bounces back from it" Balthazar is speaking with honest awe now, but there is a deep sadness underneath it and Gabriel already dreads how this story will end.

"Well, he did at least. A few years past… guess he finally pushed it too far. I have no idea what they did, but it´s like they wiped his mind clean. I´m scared they killed him for real this time. The part that makes him Castiel I mean"

The following silence is overwhelming. Gabriel pictures the fledgling that Castiel was, one of the kindest and sweetest ones there ever was. Definitely no traditional rebel like himself and Balthazar. Crazy what you learn about people when you push them too far.

Balthazar has curled himself up again and Gabriel has the feeling that his little brother is close to a breakdown. He himself feels strangely lost, having the feeling that he should mourn Castiel like Balthazar apparently does, but not willing nor able to take yet another hit. It´s always one more hit, why does it always have to be one more hit?

"Hey Balthy", he calls out to his little brother, the one he still has. "Remember Cassie nearly stepping on The Fish?"

Balthazar looks confused for a moment and Gabriel nearly curses himself- what if that is one of the memories that were taken from Balthazar?-, but suddenly his face lights up and he starts to smile. "That was crazy"

"It was" Gabriel agrees, fondly remembering that day. Father had finally gotten the hang of evolution and allowed all the angels, even the smallest fledglings to go to earth and watch the fish, that would later evolve into humankind over uncountable generations, come out of the water. Michael had made a fuss about everything, most of all about the fledglings, worrying endlessly about them and what could happen to them, but in the end it had been a wonderful day. They had all been at the beach hours early, in maybe the biggest family trip ever and it had been perfect. Perfect chaos yes, that too, but also perfect in every other way.

"First time Cassie got out of heaven", Balthazar says, a little smile playing on his lips. "I never saw anyone so utterly fascinated by waves and pebbles" "You were the one who told him the pebbles were exciting" "Yeah, because he was disappointed that there were no bees. On a beach! And anyway I didn´t count on him playing with the pebbles for solid three hours, perfectly happy"

Gabriel shakes his head, now smiling too. "Wow, he probably was the easiest fledgling to entertain, ever. You certainly weren´t" "Don´t say that like it´s a bad thing!" "I´m not, I´m not … Cassie just totally forgot The Fish, didn´t he? We were waiting for hours for that fish, talking about nothing else for days and then it comes and Cassie just toddles around at the ocean, and almost steps on The freaking Fish. I was sure Michael was having a heart attack right next to me"

Balthazar laughs, slowly shaking his head. "You tell me. And then Lucifer just sweeps in and picks up Cassie, telling him that there are big plans for that fish and Cassie seriously apologizes to that freaking fish, because of course he does, and we all die from an overdose of cuteness and Lucifer plays with Cassie the whole evening...wait, did Lucifer freaking save humanity from Cassie?"

"He did, oh Father, he really did Wonder if he remembers", Gabriel gasps and suddenly they are both laughing and gasping for air, and maybe it isn´t even that funny, but they both need it and in some way it really _is_ funny and for a few minutes the world is just fine.

Then Balthazar raises his head, wiping laughing tears from his eyes, but suddenly wary.

"Uh, Gabriel, I don´t want to ruin the mood and I don´t even know if something is bad or wrong, but what is that?"

What? Gabriel almost asks, but then he suddenly feels it too. Someone Norse, no multiple someones and it was there from the beginning and he _knew_ it, but Kali shrugged it off.

Kali shrugged it off…

There was also someone Norse the second time at Kali´s apartment, when Kali took so long to open the door, after the horrible talk at the warehouse, but Gabriel though nothing about it, never even asked. Well, Kali´s sex life is her thing, even if it would be nice to know as what exactly she sees him right now, but this is something else, this is about spying. Did the Norse God at Kali´s even leave when Gabriel came in? How much did he hear? How much did he hear now?

And where the hell is Kali, because it doesn´t feel like there is anyone at the beach.

"Gabriel?", Balthazar asks carefully, getting up from the divan "What is it? Are we in danger?"

"I don´t know", Gabriel replies tensely, not wanting to alarm his brother, but also very aware that Balthazar is no fledgling, that you can tell anything anymore. "Take your blade and stay behind me"

Balthazar obeys just in time, as the door explodes.


	16. Chapter 15

"Maybe we should go" Raphael still sounds nervous, almost afraid, whenever he talks to Michael without being asked to, and even though it hurts, Michael has to admit that his little brother is right to be scared. After centuries of having near absolute power over Raphael, he has to constrict himself every time Raphael talks all of the sudden, to not turn what should be normal conversation into power play and deliberately hurt his brother with a few well chosen words.

It just seems out of order, somehow undermining his authority, for Raphael to talk like this and Michael feels like an asshole for having to remind himself over and over again that your brother talking to you without being requested isn´t an offense, but how it should be and that punishing Raphael would be abuse.

"Where to?", he asks, pushing back his dark thoughts and trying to encourage his little brother to say more, but he isn´t sure if he sounds in any way convincing. He has brutally ripped apart the good connection he once had with Raphael before Lucifer´s rebellion, and he knows already that establishing a new one based on trust again, is going to be one of the hardest things he has ever done.

If it is even possible. Raphael is trying his best and doing more than could ever be asked of him, but can anyone really forgive his torturer? Should anyone?

They are still sitting in the garden and few feet away from each other on that damned clearing, having talked more and more open to each other than they have for, what feels like forever. They have long lost all feeling of time, but then, time in the garden has always been strange and the whole draining emotional roller-coaster of the last days, certainly doesn´t help with to feel sure of anything.

Raphael shots him a quick look, apparently decides that it´s safe to speak and answers: "To heaven… I mean, to the other parts of heaven of course. We should look after the young ones, someone has to"

 _Archangels_ Michael thinks with mild amusement, that is further dulled by how deeply tired he suddenly feels. Angels don´t require sleep, but that doesn´t mean they can´t feel tired. Tired of the world. Tired of their own existence. Tired of getting up every time they fall, just to be pushed down again by the next tragedy. And while tired humans can just close their eyes and forget all their pains for a few hours, there is no way to get rid of that feeling.

 _We are archangels, w_ _e were meant to lead and_ _somehow_ _Raphael, our mindless soldier,_ _is the only one who remembers._

Michael on the contrary, after all those years of leading heaven, of only existing to lead heaven, just doesn´t find it in himself anymore to get up, be strong, calm down everyone, then professionally slip back into the old established routines. The mere notion almost sends him into sheer panic.

He has kept away from the garden for so long and now the effect the place has on him is multiplied for all this time of self restraint, self punishment in some way. While the garden has always been his home and he has yearned to return there after endlessly taking care of the fledglings in the days before Lucifer´s rebellion, when heaven expanded like crazy, now the effect is well past mere yearning and homesickness.

He has turned the garden from his home into something special, into salvation and now it´s like a drug, he can´t live without anymore, even after only having one shot. He has to stay here in the garden, because here Gabriel is alive and Raphael and Lucifer are whole and happy. Outside he will have to deal with the consequences of Gabriel being dead, of Raphael being a mess, thanks to him, of Lucifer being a monster – or not and which would be worse? - and he doesn´t feel remotely up to facing and attempting to fix this mess.

What is there to fix anyway? Gabriel is dead, never coming back, and who knows what irreversible damage the cage has done to Lucifer? Raphael can improve a bit maybe, already has improved a bit, but there is a limit to that also. Torture (finally calling it what it was, feels strangely liberating, while hurting in entirely new ways) is nothing to just shrug away and Raphael´s memories of good times that could give him hope are irreversibly destroyed to make things worse.

After his short wave of confidence fueled by his makeshift plan – get along, kill Kali, start the apocalypse-, he is quickly falling into a hole again and he doesn´t have the strength to fight it. Why even try, if it´s possible to just stay in the garden, _almost_ seeing Gabriel playing and laughing, wondering where his brother is now, hoping that there still could be something like an afterlife for angels, that the youngest archangel has still a chance to get the happy ending he deserves…

Michael jumps to his feet so quickly, it startles Raphael, the younger archangel's shock waving over their bond and consuming it for a second.

"What is it?", he asks nervously and Michael almost laughs and answers that it´s over, that´s it, he has finally gone mad, irreversibly and totally off the bonkers, but the sudden idea that his mind has come up with in a feverish haze just won´t let go, an idea entirely mad, but absolutely fascinating and captivating him at the same time.

So, no one knows if there is an afterlife for angels and most everyone assumes there isn´t, but what if they are all wrong? And assuming there is, there would certainly be a possibility to bring someone back from it, just as there is for the humans, as his own true vessel has demonstrated so timely and impressively.

Alright, of course every plan in that direction stands and falls with there actually _being_ an afterlife for angels, but as Michael realizes in a wave of fear and utter excitement, there actually exists someone to ask. The same person who is also maybe the only one who could bring back Gabriel in case. And this is where his half cooked plan turns from tolerably mad into batshit crazy.

"What is it?", Raphael has asked, so Michael tells him. And is meet with not-so-thinly-veiled horror, that his little brother doesn´t dare to express in words.

"Come on, say what you think", Michael urges him, even though he already is much too taken by the idea and he knows it. There has to exist an afterlife for angels, there just has to! Everything else would be grotesquely unfair. Which means his plan, as far as it can be called a plan, isn´t even that crazy, thinking about it, just...extreme.

Raphael swallows, clearly not sure if following Michael´s orders is a good idea in this case, but he gets himself together and says: "You want to summon _Death_ on the off-chance that there is a way to bring back Gabriel? I don´t know Michael, that sounds more than just a bit risky"

"Well, who else is there to ask?", Michael snaps. "We don´t know anything about what happens after we die, doesn´t that bother you? And also, it isn´t _that_ risky, I have done it before. He is an angel and he listened to me the last time, so he should listen to me now.

That argument is shaky at best and he knows it. Riders of the apocalypse are only classified as angels, because not even Father has any idea what else to call them and they certainly don´t appreciate being commanded around, Death least of all.

Yes, Michael has managed to command him once, during The Flood, but firstly it had been one of the most terrifying experiences of his live and secondly while no one ever said it out loud, it is way too clear to Michael that he has only managed to hold his own against Death, because Death let him, seeing him as a boy who was trying way to hard to please his father. Death´s eyes never expressed pity and maybe are unable to, but Michael still felt it, whenever the horseman looked at him and it was driving him as crazy then, as it would now.

"Also, the apocalypse is on our list anyway, so what difference does it make? You didn´t think the apocalypse a bad thing a few days back!"

Raphael doesn´t answer that question, that doesn´t deserve an answer anyway. A few days back, when the hell gate was just opened and closed again, feels like a whole age has passed in between. The whole world has changed since then, whatever any of them has said back then, can barely be used as an argument anymore.

"You know that we would have to make a carnage to free him" Raphael states as neutral as possible and Michael almost shrugs it away, because what difference do a few humans and a bit of hell scum make against his brother´s life and since when does Raphael care about mud monkey anyway, when he forces himself to stop and think for a moment.

Alright, maybe releasing Death on earth right now, isn´t the best idea in the book. If this works and he somehow gets Gabriel back (and by now he is mostly convinced that he will, because he _has_ to believe it to be able to go on) crashing them all right into the apocalypse at the same time, isn´t exactly what he wants. Gabriel would be furious and he would have a point.

"Alright, so what if we don´t release him? Maybe we can reach him anyway"

Raphael seems pretty skeptic and Michael can´t exactly blame him. It´s not like Death is next door, he is in a coffin 600 feet deep in the ground and while angels can reach almost any place without a vessel, there are still all the protections and bindings, keeping Death inside the coffin. Most of them were cast by Michael and Raphael, when constraining Death again after the flood, so dissolving them is theoretically possible. The tricky part will be dissolving enough to talk to him, while keeping enough in place to keep him in the coffin. Yeah, not the easiest task, but doable.

"You still aren´t content with this", Michael remarks, after he has told Raphael about his thoughts. Raphael slowly shakes his head and remarks: "If we remember all the spells and how they affect each other and work out the right combination, it can work, just… If we want Gabriel back, releasing Death isn´t an option anymore. I don´t think he can do it from his coffin"

That is actually something Michael has already thought about and chosen to ignore. "We will think about it, when we come to that", he answers, way too sure of what he will do, when presented the deal of freeing Death and getting back his little brother in exchange, but not quite wanting to admit it yet. "Help me with the spells"

The silently work side by side for the next hours, in deep concentration, that feels surprisingly normal and familiar, reminding Michael of his days of running heaven with Lucifer and bringing up half forgotten images of Lucifer leaning against a tree, biting his lip in concentration, completely immersed and his childlike joy, when finally figuring something out.

Michael pushes it away to sink deeper into his own task. The thought of getting Gabriel back is hypnotizing and Michael doesn´t want to crash from this new height. Doesn´t think he would survive the crash.

"I still can´t believe we are doing this", Raphael mutters, just to bit his tongue, cursing himself for having said that out loud, but Michael doesn´t think it makes much of a difference. Raphael´s opinion on all of this is pretty obvious over the bond anyway and he himself didn´t really imagine that the first thing they would do together after their half-reconciliation, would be summoning Death, but life is strange and sometimes the only thing you can do is just go with in.

"Shut up", he says anyway, but sounding too distracted to sound serious. "Do your want Gabriel back or not?"

It´s an impossible question of course and he listens contentedly to Raphael struggling for an answer that criticizes the plan, without being rude against Gabriel and failing. "Good. Then I go down and talk to him and you look after the spells. Take care, you know what he can do to us"

Raphael just nods miserably, but Michael suddenly feels excited in a way, he hasn´t felt for a very long time, or always having been one of the most responsible and shut in angels, maybe ever. This is one of the most dangerous things, he has ever done and while he has never really seen the appeal of getting yourself in danger without any reason, like Lucifer and Gabriel seemed to do, right now he is absolutely excited. Death could kill him, everything could fail in a heartbeat and for some reason that makes him feel alive again.

He shots a last look back at Raphael, hoping that they have worked it all out enough for this crazy idea to work and goes under.

Going through solid things is strange. It´s a bit like scanning a whole city, it isn´t actually _him_ going to all of the places, some part always remains, but his consciousness is floating, floating down farther and farther, floating towards an entity that has always scared him, something maybe more powerful than Father, something that it is a very, very bad idea to disturb.

The strange feeling alive and thinking of Gabriel are they only things keeping him going. He can´t turn back, because he has to save his little brother, bring him home at last. Plain and simple as that.

And then he suddenly feels Death close way to close to him and a voice, whose calm steadiness somehow makes him nervous in a way that tugs at the core of his being, saying: "I thought the next person coming to me, would be your brother. I confess I was wrong about that"

"You mean Lucifer?" Michael´s voice is coming out way too high and he desperately tries to put himself together. He is an archangel, the first angel in creation, heavens oldest, their leader, responsible for all his siblings and he has to sound like that being, not like a scared human girl. He wants to pray, but Death would probably hear everything and that makes it not worth the risk. "Coming to you in which way?"

"Coming to use me for the apocalypse, summon me, bind me. He always had that streak of melodrama, your brother, always thinking himself so important, as if he was the center of the universe. A little child having a temper tantrum and making the whole world watch"

For the first time in ages Michael feels the strong urge to defend Lucifer, but he manages to stop himself, because Death is seriously frighting and he doesn´t want to speak about that brother anyway. The whole situation is getting too uncomfortable for him and he tries to cover it, with no idea if he is even remotely succeeding.

"Lucifer is a traitor", he says, still not content with how his voice sounds, but hopefully improving. "I didn´t come to talk about him, but about Gabriel. You also reap angels, don´t you?"

While there is no physical form he is talking to, with the horseman still secured in the coffin,he is somehow sure that Death is slightly raising his eyebrows that very moment. "I will reap God one day, Michael. While this current arrangement refrains me from physically over-viewing the reapings and cuts off some of my power, it doesn´t stop me from doing my part in maintaining the natural order. You can´t stop Death, no matter how far you put him away, so you don´t have to see him any more.

The tone of the last sentence is absolutely chilling, making Michael feel like a stupid, little fledgling, who has stumbled into something whose consequences he can barely understand.

"Alright then, so can you reach Gabriel? Wherever he is now"

Death´s voice doesn´t change at all, but Michael has the nagging feeling, that if it were anyone else, his counterpart would burst into laughter at this point. It´s not in the tone and they have no bond that he is aware of, but somehow the feeling that the horseman is slightly amused, slides over to him.

"Finally caught up I see", Death replies. "And Gabriel hasn´t stopped using what he has learned, but that is no surprise of course"

"What do you mean by that?" Michael asks impatiently, although getting impatient with Death surely isn´t a good idea, especially when wanting a major favor from him. "Can you bring Gabriel back or not?"

"No", says Death calmly and the fragile dreamworld that Michael has kept upright till now with his crazy whim of a plan, crashes and bursts into dust, leaving nothing at all.

"I can´t bring him back, because he isn´t dead"

"Don´t go off", he adds sharply, as Michael´s whole being feels like being thrown off a cliff and having just landed in an absolutely unexpected pile of cushions, gasping and wondering where on earth the sudden cushions came from. He just wants to curl up alone and process and then one day, maybe gain enough trust in the universe to dare believe what he just heard.

"Don´t go off now, because I am not finished yet. I know you have a specialty for only seeing what you want to be true, Michael, all the archangels have it, even God. But for once in your life, you will drop all your pride and listen to what I will tell you, because I am only telling this once and heavens future depends on it, maybe all the future of your little planet"

"Alright", Michael gasps, not feeling like dropping his pride is going to be much of a problem, since there seems to be nothing left of it, but very sure that he shouldn´t be trusted with vitally important information right now, with his going mad, with fear and hope and fearing to hope, but it doesn´t sound like Death is planning to give him any recovery time. "What is it?"

"It´s about Gabriel", Death says and Michael feels like the whole world just started spinning. "About Gabriel and Lucifer´s petty rebellion and you will listen and not interrupt me"

Michael only manages a weak sound, that could mean anything from agreeing to suffocating. And then Death rips away every illusion about how he made his little brother feel that day.

…

 _Gabriel is fleeing, running and running and running, just wanting- no- **needing** to get away from his brothers, from Lucifer, whom he barely recognizes anymore, from Michael, who seems to have lost all empathy and is perfectly capable of killing his own brothers and Raphael, whom he always relied on seeing if something was wrong with the two older ones and who still couldn´t see Lucifer´s rebellion coming. He just needs to get away from all of it, all the fighting, all the slaughter, all the pain he still can´t believe is real. _

_So he is flying, flying to earth, while he feels like he is shattering from the inside. He thought he knew pain after that time he broke his wing. He was wrong. He has never been so wrong._

 _ **This** is pain. _

_Seeing your family turn on each other, seeing your live falling apart, right in front of your eyes and yet being unable to do anything about it._

 _This is pain and it hurts more, breaks him more, than any physical wound ever could._

 _Earth, he thinks almost dizzy, blood pounding it his ears, unable to block out the screams, that echo in his mind over and over again, Father help me, the screams!_

 _Earth will safe him. If there is any place that can safe him now, it is earth. Heaven is being destroyed while he flees and he doesn´t dare to face the memories waiting for him in the garden. Isn´t it weird how quick former happiness can stab you in the back, driving you away, because you can´t bear the contrast to your new life?_

 _He needs to get away, the get away from his brothers, it´s all he can think about, but in a strangely lucid moment, he realizes that they will follow him. That they will make him choose sides. They already tried to, he realizes with a sharp twist, one more stab right to his heart, Michael and Lucifer each have found suspiciously much time too sit down alone with him right before the rebellion._

 _Because they love their little brother so much. Yeah, exactly…_

 _That realization shouldn´t even hurt that much, shouldn´t make him want to crawl up and cry for the rest of eternity, like it´s the worst thing that ever happened to him, considering everything else going on, but it shows him how naive he was, maybe still is, how stupid and naive he was, thinking it was about him, when in reality it was about sides and Raphael knew it he realizes, remember the third archangel always trying to keep him away from Michael and Lucifer recently, Raphael saw it and he didn´t and he has never felt that stupid and betrayed before._

 _Well, he will never be that stupid again and the thought of Michael and Lucifer treating him like a little child to make him choose between them, literally and figuratively bribing him with candy, seals the deal for him._

 _Yes, now that Michael has won, there would be nothing easier, than go back to heaven before anyone notices his little trip, tell his oldest brother that he did the right thing and then forget Lucifer and go on with his life, or whatever is left of it by now. But he can´t do that. He just can´t put Michael over Lucifer. Or Lucifer over Michael._

 _He loves Michael for being his pillar, the most reliable person in the world, the one who always took care of him, loves him because he could always cuddle into his arms to be a fledgling again, with not a worry in the world, because Michael would take care of everything and always keep him save._

 _He loves Lucifer for sneaking him to earth when they were fledglings, for showing him tricks and hiding places in the garden, for treating him as equal and telling him his secrets, having adventures with him, being curious with him, for always having a smile for him, even when organizing heaven with Michael and being absolutely exhausted._

 _Whats worth more?_

 _How could anyone decide whats worth more?_

 _And they both wanted him to make that impossible decision, both of them betraying him in the process._

 _They will still make him chose._

 _Raw panic surges up not the first time this day and paralyzes him somewhere between heaven and earth. No, no, no! They won´t. He´ll find a way to get out of this. He will…_

 _The thought that comes to him is scary. The next one even more so. Every other day he would have declared himself crazy for thinking them, but now the whole world has gone crazy and in weird new world it seems the only logical way for him to respond. He thinks of the first time he experienced real pain, the time he broke a wing, because he miscalculated a flight as a fledgling._

 _Only he didn´t miscalculate, that´s just what he told everyone afterwards._

 _He doesn´t even know when he started doing it. It was just a game, another way to get his brothers attention, when he was bored or they were ignoring him or both. He would pretend that he was hurt, not too badly, just bad enough that they would pay attention to him, be nice to him for a while. He told himself he would never abuse it, never cause his brothers too much pain with it, that he would do it just once or twice when his brothers were really not caring for him and he really needed them to._

 _But then it worked every single time and somehow he got addicted. That easy way of getting attention, of getting cared for, of feeling loved and needed. And even though his brothers never found injuries, they never accused him of faking. They thought if they couldn´t find anything wrong, it was their fault, not his, because he was obviously in pain._

 _He became way too good at faking._

 _And then one day his brothers were arguing about that stupid name thing and Gabriel didn´t know how to stop it. So he "miscalculated" and was absolutely shocked at the pain, when he accidentally screwed up and broke his wing for real._

 _He stopped after that, because he couldn´t see his brothers that worried, without feeling like the worst brother ever and because that pain had really been horrible. But the one thing he also learned that day, was that his trick had worked once again and even better on the next level._

 _So if pretending to be injured was step one and really getting injured was step two, then step three is way to clear to him._

 _It´s just logic._

 _How far is he prepared to go to teach the ones who he loved unconditionally and who destroyed his life in response a lesson? What is he willing to give up?_

 _Feverish with anger, pain and filled with strange determination Gabriel summons Death._

 _And when Death asks what he is prepared to give in return he says:"Everything"_

…

"And why should I believe you?", Michael interrupts Death´s story, boiling inside and not caring about Death´s warning any more. "Why should I believe he went to _you_ of all people?"

"Who else did he have to go to?", Death asked back and Michael wants to drag him out of that coffin, just to hit him for his calm. "I wasn´t bound back then, it didn´t take much to summon me before you angels decided you couldn´t bear to see me anymore. It was the easiest solution for him, plain and simple"

"What did you ask of him?", Michael almost shouts, his voice shaking. "What did you do to him, when he was desperate?"

If Death had been in front of him now, Michael would have burned under that gaze. "Michael, it was you who took away his future, you and Lucifer. I gave it back back to him"

…

" _What do you want?",_ _Gabriel_ _asks Death all those years ago, a young angel still, a fledgling almost, but trying to keep it together, trying to hold his own against Death himself. He doesn´t even know that much about Death he suddenly realize_ _s_ _, just that Michael and Lucifer always warned him from_ _the horsemen of the apocalypse, because they are angels, but not really and because they can be really dangerous, Death most of all._

 _And yet he is ready to give this being everything, just to throw his brothers off. He realizes he is scared of himself, of what he is capable of doing when_ _being_ _pushed. He has never really been pushed until t_ _hat day_ _._

" _I want you", Death states simply._

" _Me?", Gabriel tries a nervous laugh, but it comes out as a choke. "What do you want with me?"_

" _Does it matter?", Death asks back. "Do you want to get away, or is this just a game for you? Are you a fledgling or an archangel?"_

 _It doesn´t matter. That´s what shocks Gabriel most about himself. He doesn´t care what Death will do to him. Not after today. One part of him is silently screaming and going crazy, the other is just cold, probably dead and none of them care._

 _He thinks he could just ask Death if he is really partly dead and almost starts laughing hysterically, but catches himself very quickly. This is serious. This is maybe the most serious conversation of his life yet and he has to be a full grown archangel and behave like it._

 _He just feels so empty._

" _I want to get away. I am an archangel and I´m not playing" Facing Death is difficult, those eyes are starring right into him, seeing everything, seeing right to his core, but he feels like there is nothing to see anymore anyway. Just emptiness and determination._

" _Take me"_

" _For a hundred years", Death states and surprises Gabriel with it. "You are mine for a hundred years, submitting yourself entirely. I get a feather from you to make sure of that. After you served your time, you are free to go. In exchange I will mimic your death in a way not even God would be able to uncover. Do we have a deal?"  
_

 _A hundred years, Gabriel thinks. That´s not much. That´s not much at all and a way better deal than he expected. So why is he shaking?_

 _Stop!, Michael, Lucifer and Raphael are screaming in his mind. Stop it right now, Gabriel, that´s a terrible deal. Don´t do it, don´t give away your control._

 _He is sick of his brothers, of everything._

 _He is dizzy and tired and heartbroken._

 _He can´t think anymore and he doesn´t want to think._

 _Just get away._

" _Do we have a deal?"_

 _And he takes Death cold, cold hand and says with all the confidence and certainty he can muster:_

" _Deal"_

…

"And then?", Michael´s voice breaks. "What did you do to him then, you monster?"

"Michael, I am not a monster, I never was. Everyone is afraid of dying, so they paint me in a way, they can hate me. And you are doing it again, accusing everyone but yourself of being the monster who hurt your brother, seeing only what you want to see"

"I´m not", Michael whispers. "You have no idea you much I suffered the last days, how much I reproached myself. How much I hate myself"

"You do", Death says. "You also hate yourself for what you did to Raphael, even Lucifer. But you do it in general. You push away the details, refuse to think about _how_ you drove them away, _how_ hurt them and that doesn´t help anyone. If you go on like this, you will never start doing anything about it, just roll in self-pity and try to live in memories. Stop it! You have to see the details, accept them as something that happened to fix them, or nothing will change, until the day I reap you all"

"Gabriel?", Michael whispers, because there is nothing to say. Nothing he can say to Death apparently deciding to play family counselor on the archangels, which probably means, it isn´t about them for him, but about the universe, as Death only takes interest in them when they do something threatening his precious natural order. But his little speech still stings horribly.

"I took him as a reaper. I gave him something to do, something to distract him. A clear schedule, a safe environment, while still confronting him with the real world. I taught your brother to survive"

Michael´s startles overwhelmed by sudden anger and disbelief "You think you saved him? You think you did good? "He was young and innocent and you made him a reaper! You made him kill people, taught him to kill. You turned him into what he is now. What have you done to my brother?"

"You still don´t get it" Death stats still calm, but there is fury behind it now, fury that can sink whole continents. "You archangels are thicker then humans sometimes, or you wouldn´t do exactly what I just told you to stop doing, accusing anyone but yourself.

He came to me freely and desperate, begged me to help him get away. I told him the price was a hundred years of his life in complete surrender to me and he said yes. I told him he would have to give me his angel blade and he gave it to me. He was shaking, he was terrified and I asked him for complete surrender and his only weapon. And he said yes. If he ran I wouldn´t have stopped him, but he never even considered that. That was how desperate he was to get away from his family, from you" Deaths voice is now so cold, the air seems to have turned into solid ice."What did I do to him? I gave him something to do, so he could learn to survive. And at the end he was laughing and joking and he has survived to this day. Tell me Michael, what did YOU do to him?"

Michael has lost all sense of orientation, time, even of himself, when he finds himself back in the garden, next to Raphael, everything Death just told him edged forever into his mind.

"Michael!" Raphael is kneeling next to him, shock in his eyes. "Michael, are you alright?" Michael feels himself being lifted up, his little brother taking in his shaking form, trying to make sense of it.

"Michael, what did he do to you?"

He wants to laugh, to cry, to punch someone, to find Gabriel, hug him and never ever let him go again. He wants to kill Death, he wants to kill every living thing in this world, just to stop this new sense of guilt, of not deserving Gabriel, of not deserving anyone from spreading out and consuming him, but then he would again prove Death right, instead of really doing something useful for his brothers for a change.

"The truth", he murmurs, silent laughter painfully stuck in his throat. "Just the truth"

Lucifer´s rebellion, it always comes back to Lucifer´s rebellion, doesn´t it? To that horrible day, he pushed one brother into the pit and lost another. The day Gabriel ran away. And Michael isn´t sure if it was better not to know where Gabriel was running to, that day.

"Michael!", Raphael´s voice pulls him back into the present. "Michael, seriously, what is wrong?" 

He just stares at his little brother deadpan. "How much have I failed", he whispers "if Death has to step in to save us all?"

 **Cookies for everyone who knew that Gabriel also is an angel of death and resurrection. Guess that explains Mystery Spot…**

 **And I hope you can bear with me, I just always thought Gabriel needed one intermediate step from sweet little angel to Loki, so this happened. And I know Death is supposed to be more above it all, than he seems now, but believe me, he is, while this is about family for everyone else, he is already playing the apocalypse.**

 **I like reviews and I don´t bite :)**


	17. Chapter 16

Gabriel can not claim to be surprised, when he recognizes the three figures standing in the spot where the door just evaporated, but at the same time it´s not like he expected them either. It´s just that the last days have been such a messy clusterfuck, that he can´t bring himself anymore to bat an eye at yet another part of his past coming in to join the party.

He could just have really done without more complications.

"Uhm, introductions?", he suggests, carefully sizing up the Norse Gods and trying to guess how much they know about the real Him. If they were in Kali´s apartment and have then spied on Balthazar, Kali and him, since before Kali left, there isn´t much left to hide, but in case they should have missed something, he certainly won´t present everything to them on a silver platter.

"We know who you are!" The voice of the goddess snaps like a whip and her face is hard as stone, while one of the two gods behind her seems utterly emotionless and the second one grins stupidly at the two angels. "And you know who we are, _Loki!"_

Gabriel actually flinches at the way, she pronounces the name, like it was the worst curse in the world, but then, she always has been this way. Always avoiding him, never accepting him in, influencing her sons against him… Alright, this is beginning to sound like kindergarten complaints.

He shouldn´t care about it, this is Loki´s life and Loki has become almost a stranger recently, someone he has long left behind and only clung to occasionally, when meeting Kali. Besides the time as Loki wasn´t bad and she won´t ruin the good parts for him in retrospective, just like she hasn´t managed to ruin them back then. He won´t allow it.

"Well, if you call him Loki, then obviously you are a few steps behind", Balthazar remarks and Gabriel wants to kick his little brother to make him shut up, because what is he thinking, drawing their attention to himself, when Gabriel has already planned out how he will do everything to prevent Balthazar from getting noticed? Balthazar has nothing to do with Loki, he shouldn´t get messed up in his life, if he gets hurt in the process it´s all Gabriel´s fault.

"Also you may all know each other, but I don´t know you, which is kind of rude. So who are you and what do you want from him?"

"Just stop it!", Gabriel hisses, grabbing Balthazar´s arm and pulling the younger angel behind him again. "Stay where you are, I´ll work it all out" Balthazar shots him a defiant glance, that says pretty clearly that if shit hits the fan, he will be right next to Gabriel, danger or not, and Gabriel is utterly frustrated and touched at the same time. Why did he let Balthazar become as stubborn as himself?

But now they have noticed his little brother anyway, so why not do introductions? It´s an easy way to buy time, after all.

"That lady is Frigga. She is married to Odin, who is basically the boss, and she hates me" Frigga doesn´t seem to disagree with his description, so he goes on. "Those two are her sons, Baldur and Hoder. Somehow Baldur is always there, when everything goes down for me and he has a crush on Kali, which..." 

"I don´t just have a crush, we are together!"

"...I said, he has a crush on Kali, which doesn´t make things easier. Oh, stop pouting, that´s childish, really. Hoder is blind..."

"This is introductions, not fighting advice!"

"Oh, Baldur, shut up, I was just going to say, he shouldn´t be underestimated anyway. And Balthazar, if you have the choice, please go for Baldur, that would do the world a greater pleasure"

"Will do", Balthazar replies, grinning as Baldur is fuming quietly. "And they hate you why exactly? This isn´t about Kali, is it? Who brings his mother and brother to fight over a girl?"

"Oh, he might just do that", Gabriel mutters and Baldur almost attacks him, but Hoder quickly puts a hand on his brother`s arm, getting him to relax within seconds. Gabriel shots a long glance at Hoder.

Baldur is just an annoying prick, who´s usually boring, but gets hot tempered when feeling wronged and while Frigga can be scary when defending her children, he doesn´t worry too much about her either.

Hoder is something entirely else. He is the blind one, barely talking, barely expressing emotions, always in the background, while Baldur takes all the attention for himself, but there is something about the blind god, that deeply unnerves Gabriel. Baldur and Frigga are exactly what they appear to be on the surface, while Hoder hides everything away. It´s impossible to assess him and while Gabriel hasn´t got Michael´s control mania, with Hoder in the room, he wants to scream, because some part of him is suddenly sure that if someone here is his doom it´s the silent god and if he is there is nothing to be done against it.

Frigga is meanwhile starring down Balthazar. "You have no idea about Norse mythology, have you boy?" "Uhm...You have giant wolves?", Balthazar tries a half educated stab in the dark. "Yeah, one of them is going to eat her husband", Gabriel remarks. "Not the most diplomatic thing to say, Balth" Balthazar just shrugs. "Sorry then"

"Oh, you will be sorry", Frigga hisses. "But this isn´t about the oaf that betrayed me and my children by allowing _him_ in" Her glance doesn´t fail to make clear who she means by "him" and that she still considers Gabriel the worst person in the existence "This is about my children!"

"Okay, that´s complicated, let me explain" Gabriel tries to quickly fill Balthazar in. "There is this story, legend,... whatever, see it like you see the Bible stories. Well, in this story Baldur has a dream about getting murdered, so his mother makes every thing in the world promise not to hurt him, and with every thing I mean animals, plants and metals. You know, because mice and tulips can be sooooo nasty..."

"And she forgets something, doesn´t she?", Balthazar interrupts, mostly to get his brother back on track. The Norse probably won´t react so well to Gabriel making fun of parts of their mythology for too long. Also it´s not like this story sound crazier than some parts of the Bible, so they don´t exactly have high ground. "They always forget one thing in this kind of stories"

"Right" Gabriel says, snapping out of his ironic lecture about the dangers of lemons. "Mistletoe. She forgets Mistletoe and meanwhile the other Gods are having fun throwing things at Baldur, which don´t hurt him anymore because they promised not to and then Loki finds it fun to trick Hoder into shooting at Baldur with an arrow of mistletoe and Baldur dies and then there is a lot of confusion and everyone argues and the other gods punish Loki and he gets pissed off at them and starts the end of the world. Average european good night story, you know..."

"But...", Balthazar tries to quickly wrap his head around the story, eyes widening when he realizes the important point. "But… you are Loki, so what in Father´s name…?… Did you…? Did you miss, or what?", he tries to lighten the sudden tension between him and his brother, ignoring Frigga´s gasp.

"No, I never did it"; Gabriel sighs. "It´s like Revelation, nothing to take to serious. I mean, the apocalypse is the real thing, but can you imagine it being that organized? Ninety percent would be Michael shouting at everyone to get in line. The important thing is, Frigga takes the basic story serious, so she thinks I will get Hoder to kill Baldur – the How doesn´t matter – and that it will result in the end of the world. So since I suddenly appeared as Loki, the three of them have tried to get rid of me. They were way more subtle though and haven´t bothered me since I left on my own account, so what has changed?"

"You aren´t real, that has changed!", Frigga shrieks. "You tricked us into thinking you were one of us, but you are not even a god, just a petty Christian my useless husband brought in! And you called yourself Loki, for what, for fun? How sick can you be? You are not even a god and you want to murder my son?"

Gabriel closes his eyes, trying to block out her shrieking and ignoring Balthazar, who is worriedly whispering his name; his real name, not Loki.

"Since when has Kali been informing on me?", he asks in a flat voice, like he doesn´t even care.

"From the beginning", Baldur grins at him.

"No", Gabriel states, still without any emotion in his voice. "No, she didn´t. But it doesn´t matter anyway, does it?" He feels Balthazar´s hand gently squeezing his shoulder and is relieved and bothered at the same time, because his little brother isn´t falling for his usual I-don´t-care-facade. He really isn´t used to having someone, who can see through him with ease, anymore.

But he can´t let himself go now; if nothing else, he has to protect Balthazar, so he does his best Loki grin, and says as casual as possible: "Now let´s just stop this nonsense. The best tactic to make sure I never kill Baldur, would be not attacking me. Ever thought about that?"

Judging from Baldur´s face, at least that god apparently hasn´t, but Hoder is impossible to read as always and Frigga just shrugs his perfectly sound argument away, like an annoying fly.

"You are a danger to my sons as long as you live. Prophecies are fickle things, but they have some truth in them, so I will see this end now, _angel"_

Gabriel doesn´t even try to correct her, about him not being an angel, but an archangel. It wouldn´t make a difference anyway. He isn´t a god and for most polytheists that means he is nothing. Just a fly, daring to attempt killing her precious son. Her precious, spoiled-rotten brat.

But she is careful. That she only has her sons with her, means the other Norse don´t approve. And she won´t risk her sons, that´s why she allows him to keep talking. She is counting on the angels to attack first and make mistakes in the rush.

Not as clever as she thinks she is, if he can work that out within minutes. And she has Baldur, with her, who is pretty easy to anger.

For one second Gabriel contemplates not risking anything and just dropping his shields, calling Michael over the bond. If Michael´s grief in the alley was anything to go by, his big brother would be there within seconds, turning the Norse to dust. For a moment he wants nothing more than shout out to him, but then he remembers again what Michael did to Raphael, to Balthazar, to every other angel and his insides turn cold.

That wouldn´t be rescue, that would be another kind of capture and he can´t allow that. He has been in worse situations over the years after all and he didn´t need Michael then, so he doesn´t need him now. Doesn´t need his brother ever again. He can deal with the world on his own.

He has just never had anyone to loose, in those other situations.

But the one he has to loose, doesn´t seem to be slow either, because he is already provoking Baldur in a way in which Frigga and Hoder won´t be able to hold the enraged Norse back forever.

"I just don´t understand you", Balthazar is saying with a smirk. "If you have a story like that hanging over your head, maybe don´t behave in a way, that makes people _want_ to throw things at you"

Apparently that was the last straw, because Baldur moves incredibly fast and half takes Gabriel by surprise, but Balthazar is ready, quickly stabbing with his angel blade and making a hit that doesn´t do much to stop Baldur, but as expected now Frigga is moving to defend her precious son and she is running right into Gabriel.

"That was a bit predictable, wasn´t it?", he hisses, as he puts all his strength in tackling her to the floor. She only grunts in response and without being quite sure how she got out of his hold, he suddenly finds himself slammed against one of the divans, remembering a bit late that Frigga not only put up with Odin and Baldur for centuries, but also gave birth to the Valkyries. Best not underestimate her.

Balthazar and Baldur have meanwhile somehow pushed over the second divan and destroyed the TV in their fight and Gabriel would maybe feel bad for the family owning the house, if having a private beach house in a major tourist region wouldn´t indicate having more than enough money to cope with loosing a bit of it.

Frigga is pressing him surprisingly hard and she doesn´t even having a weapon, but well, neither has he anymore, since she knocked his blade away when he was slightly dazzled on the divan and he is scrambling for some defense that will work on her. She knows Loki far to well, most of the Norse do and is quite immune against his tricks, so fighting like the Trickster probably won´t go too well either. But he is still an archangel and she will always underestimate that power.

He is an archangel and he is seriously pissed off by now. Everything since the hell gate has been emotionally excruciating and he is tired and angry and he just has enough. There are enough problems he has to face anyway not a small part of them created by himself and he isn´t about to let a Norse goddess stop him, just because she thinks he is plotting against her annoying son, when he doesn´t even have any capacity left to do that.

He is an archangel and the house rips apart, crashing Frigga, Baldur and Balthazar hard to the ground and burying them in rubble, while Gabriel is standing upright in midst the destruction, perfect beach all around him, stars above, feeling like laughing and crying at the same time.

Feeling definitely more like crying, when his eyes fall on Balthazar, his little brother half buried by the rubble and not moving at all.

"Balth!", he gasps, at his brother´s side within a heartbeat. "Balthazar, please, are you alright?"

Shit, what has he done? Hiding as the Trickster he has almost forgotten that he possesses this kind of raw power and he isn´t even sure, how much younger angels can be hurt by it. It´s not like he has ever tried and what he has done was more like unintentionally going nuclear, than like his half-controlled explosion with Kali in the market.

No, he can´t think about Kali now. Balthazar, just care for Balthazar, everything else can wait.

Balthazar´s vessel is now certainly dead, if it wasn´t already, but he can´t bring himself to care about that. It´s not like the souls of his own vessels last very long either. The question is, if Balthazar is still inside.

There are no wingmarks in the rubble, are there? It´s all so messy, so many pieces crossing each other and Balthazar´s shoulders are buried in the worst possible way to judge and it has become night and Gabriel is going into panic and suddenly he is sure that there _are_ wingmarks and his world stops for a moment turning, just to start spinning again with twice the speed, oh Father, Father, no, please no.

Is this what he has put Michael through?

"Balthazar, please", he whispers, feeling in some way like he deserves this, but it is still unfair, because _Balthazar_ doesn´t deserve this, he just doesn´t. "This isn´t funny, this isn´t funny at all, just _stop_ it, God, I am such a hypocrite, this is the freaking worst thing ever, Balthazar, PLEASE!"

And then Balthazar moves so slightly, that Gabriel doesn´t even dare to hope, just starring at his brother, being afraid, so afraid that he is just hallucinating to cope and then Balthazar whispers: "Little warning would have been nice" and Gabriel is crying and laughing and crushing Balthazar´s vessel more to pieces than it already is, because he can´t hold his little brother close enough and the world is spinning the right speed again and everything will be alright, it just has to be!

He works Balthazar carefully out of the rubble and heals his broken vessel as soon as he can access the full damage. Balthazar offers to help more than once, but Gabriel tells him to shut up and Balthazar just smiles after a while, shaking his head and watching his brother with a deep fondness.

"There we go", Gabriel says finally, still dizzy from shock and relief. "There better be no damage to your grace, otherwise we might have to kidnap Raphael right now. Which I would totally do. But you should be okay, as far as I can say, so you can try to get up…" His sentence trails off into nothingness, as he sees Balthazar´s expression going from shaking his head over his brother´s worry to utter terror within seconds.

Gabriel is immediately back on his knees, putting his hand on Balthazar´s forehead to calm the younger angel down, while he himself is close to screaming for Michael, for Raphael, for anyone, because he isn´t good at this and he has no idea what is happening – this isn´t fair, Balthazar was alright just seconds ago –, when suddenly something cool touches his throat and Balthazar´s defeated look tells him that he has read his little brother´s expression wrong.

Balthazar wasn´t in pain, he was trying to warn him.

And Gabriel knows without having to look, who is holding the blade to his throat and that it in fact _is_ his angel blade. It´s so obvious and such an obvious oversight from himself, that it hurts.

Baldur is always taking the foreground and Frigga barely shuts up, but everyone always forgets Hoder.

Blind, quiet, scary Hoder and Gabriel has forgotten him too, even though he has never felt comfortable around the god and has told himself specifically NOT to forget him, not to underestimate, never. And still, the moment he was busy with Frigga and Balthazar with Baldur, he completely forgot like an amateur, didn´t even get suspicious when it was three bodies in the rubble, where there should have been four. Was Hoder even in the house, when he blew it up? Gabriel has no idea and that is a whole new kind of scary.

Hoder doesn´t speak even now, just presses the blade closer to Gabriel´s throat and fixes Balthazar with a stare and really, why should he talk? The situation and the threat are universal.

"Shouldn´t you look after your family?", Gabriel tries halfheartedly, knowing that Hoder wouldn´t have taken action without getting his priorities straight first and won´t be distracted now. "Where are they anyway?", he adds, trying to see the places where Frigga and Baldur got thrown, preferably without cutting his own throat or getting it cut by Hoder.

"Asgard", Hoder grunts and Gabriel is actually startled to hear the god´s voice. He has almost forgotten what that voice sounds like and he has spent quite some time as Loki trying to get Hoder to talk. "If you killed them, Odin will gut you"

 _Why don´t_ you _gut me now?_ Gabriel almost asks, but asking someone currently threatening you with a blade, why he hasn´t hurt you yet, is about the stupidest idea there is. This definitely isn´t one of those movies, where you can keep the villain occupied forever, by asking one question, because apparently villains are just waiting to be able to spill their plan, tragic back story, address and phone number to someone. But Gabriel can´t imagine Hoder saying more than twenty words a day and the god already has used up nine.

All Gabriel can do is shot Balthazar reassuring glances, urging his little brother to stay still, telling him that he has everything figured out and everything will work out fine.

Balthazar just looks skeptic and worried that his older brother will do something stupid.

Which is probably the more realistic view of the situation, Gabriel has to admit to himself.

"Show me your wings", Hoder growls at him. "Buy me dinner first", Gabriel replies and receives a smack against his head that nearly sends him into the blade. Maybe that would be the moment to call for Michael he muses, as blood with a suspicious blue tinge drips to the ground. But shouldn´t Michael have sensed him by now anyway? Not like he hiding or hard to find during the last minutes.

Balthazar is half on his knees, hands pressed against the ground and looking like he is going to be sick. But at least he isn´t trapped in the rubble anymore and there is no one threatening him directly, so Gabriel just wants to shout at him to run, run and never look back.

He saves his breath. Balthazar knows very well, that he could flee and he is choosing not to. It´s not like Gabriel would run, if Balthazar were the one having an angel blade at his throat.

A kick in the back of the knee reminds Gabriel that Hoder is still waiting for him to show his wings. Not that he is going to do that. Not ever! It´s already intimate to only show the shadows and Hoder sounds like he wants the physical form, which isn´t going to happen. No way!

"You know I don´t need your brother"

Wow, that´s the third sentence in less than five minutes. Must be a record for Hoder. Shame that he is missing a tiny detail.

"Yeah, try reaching him, without letting me go" Ops, that sounded a bit too much like a challenge. Gabriel is internally screaming at Balthazar to go, just go, because this is going too far and Hoder won´t kill him, because if that were his plan, he would have done it already and Balthazar actually gets up a bit more, readying himself, and…

...Frigga grabs him from behind and Gabriel wants to scream, because this is just too unfair. Balthazar had a chance to escape and they missed it! For one really bad moment he wonders if Hoder could and would stop him, if he just threw himself into blade.

He maybe would have done it, if it weren´t for Balthazar. His little brother is only a hostage to them, useless if Gabriel is dead.

Frigga immediately begins to call Gabriel all sort of things, telling him shrilly what he did to Baldur with that explosion and how dare he, but Gabriel isn´t even listening, because he just realized something way more interesting and way more probable to be of use later.

Everyone always forgets Hoder. Including Frigga. She is so focused on saving one of her sons, she never even looks at the other. Hoder is probably lucky she didn´t kill him as a child to weaken the chances of Baldur dying further.

And while Gabriel doesn´t really know how feels, when one of your siblings gets favored, he knows damn well how it feels when a parent doesn´t even see you.

He is trying to work out how to use this situation to get Hoder on his side, but it is kind of hard to think, especially with Frigga threatening to kill Balthazar. And while Gabriel knows that she probably won´t kill him immediately, since that would mean loosing her leverage, all he can think about, is that horrible moment, when he thought it was over all and was convinced of having killed Balthazar by accident. He can´t do this again, his brother won´t suffer any more, because of him.

"Show your wings", Frigga says, now that she is back it´s her again who does all the talking. With a quick motion she cuts open Balthazar´s cheek and while Balthazar tries his best not to even flinch, Gabriel can feel his own blood beginning to boil. "Come on, _Loki_ , show us who you are"

"You are going to kill me anyway, aren´t you?", Gabriel hisses. "What´s all this fuss then?" While he doesn´t exactly what to die and definitely doesn´t want Balthazar to die, he is tired of all of this. Maybe this is a stupid movie, where the villain likes to talk after all.

"Oh, we are", Frigga purrs. "Hoder was just waiting for me and I decided I won´t make it easy for you any more, not after what you did to Baldur" _I didn´t kill him, so I didn´t do enough_ _to him_ , Gabriel thinks gloomy, watching Frigga taking something from her pocket, a little bottle with some liquid inside and…

No.

No.

Just no.

Gabriel´s mind just refuses to work. This isn´t fair, that´s just… It can´t be… He stop himself from praying. If Father allowed this situation to happen, then he doesn´t deserve to be prayed to.

"I see, you know what that is", Frigga tells him. "Little gift from Kali, if you are interested. Now show your wings – psychical, no tricks – and your brother gets an easier death than you"

"You can´t", Gabriel whispers, but he knows they can. Who is there to stop them? He tries calling for Michael, but it is like their bond is severed. Or maybe he is just to panicked to get past his own shields, his own stupid pride. "Please, you can´t. Odin won´t allow that, no one will, just don´t, please, just don´t!"

Frigga just smiles.

Balthazar is looking a him wide eyed, tears forming and Gabriel can´t even smile at him to reassure him. That lie would be too big even for him to pull off.

He can´t see how Hodor is reacting, but no one ever cares about Hoder.

 _This isn´t happening to me_ , he thinks, as Hoder pushes him to his knees, feeling too numb to even be afraid. _This can´t be happening, I have pissed_ _off so_ _many peopl_ _e_ _, have done so many things I deserve punishment for and in the end I get my wings fried for something I didn´t even do_ _yet and probably never will?_

Balthazar is crying openly as Gabriel closes his eyes and lets his wings become visible, soft golden feathers falling from his shoulders to the ground in a gentle bow. _This isn´t happening to me, this can´t be happening, this must be happening to someone else. Loki maybe._ But Loki isn´t even an angel. Loki was one of them. They wouldn´t have done this to Loki.

He is praying as Hoder pours the holy oil over his wings, but not to Father. _Michae_ _l!_ _Lucifer! Raphael! Balthazar! Everyone_ _!_ _Anyone!_ He can´t reach the bonds. Are the Norse blocking that? _Can_ they block that? He is alone, so alone, even Balthazar seems like a million miles away. But this is his last chance, so he has to say what he needs to say, no matter if anyone is hearing it or not.

 _Michael, I´m sorry_ _for_ _what I did to you. I thought_ _Balthazar dead for a moment_ _, you know, and if it was_ _as horrible for you as it was for me, then_ _maybe I should apologize, despite what you have done. Lucifer, I´m sorry I didn´t believe in you_ _enough_ _, I´m sorry for not trying hard enough to safe you from yourself. Raphael, I´m sorry I left you and couldn´t save you. Balthazar, I´m sorry_ _in pulled you into this._ _Just close your eyes, please close your eyes,_ _you don´t have to watch,_ _you really don´t._ _Everyone else...sorry_ _for running_ _. Just sorry._

He feels the heat, coming closer and closer to his feathers. And at the very last moment he opens his eyes, because he just NEEDS someone, he can´t do this alone and he locks eyes with Balthazar, who doesn´t look away and bond or not, at this moment it is as if Hoder and Frigga have vanished. It´s just the two of them, silently saying goodbye and Balthazar is even smiling, smiling for Gabriel through his tears and Gabriel is smiling back, because that is what he does when everything hits the fan and then the fire touches the holy oil on Gabriel´s wings and the world just stops.

Gabriel´s last thought is, how young and innocent Balthazar looks.

The thought after that is, that he really should have given Michael a chance.

The thought after _that_ is, that getting your wings burned with holy fire, shouldn´t _tickle._ Not that he is complaining, but he has been expecting unbearable pain.

The thought after that is, H _ow on earth am I still conscious?_ _And what is that smell, because shouldn´t it be burned feathers?_

And then he thinks that Frigga said Kali gave them the holy oil and suddenly he is laughing at the top of his lungs and Hoder and Frigga just stare at him and suddenly Balthazar is out of Frigga´s grip and vanishes and Balthazar is safe! Balthazar is safe and Gabriel is laughing and laughing, kneeling on a perfect beach in Bali, while olive oil burns on his wings, burning, yes, but the fire never touches the feathers, because it´s olive oil, not holy oil, never was holy oil and Gabriel wants to kill Kali and kiss her at the same time, but for now, he just can´t stop laughing like a maniac at his sudden insane luck.


	18. Chapter 17

It was one of the best days of Balthazar´s life, seeming almost like a dream. Sure, it started with him thinking Gabriel had been brutally murdered, just after reappearing after years and years in which everyone but Balthazar believed him dead and then went on with the most traumatic use of olive oil in the history of creation, but it impossibly managed to make up for that.

The house in Bali on the perfect beach, childishly wrestling for the TV remote, sweets, talking about the good times in heaven, talking like it would only be a matter of time for the good times to return, having hope again...

Gabriel.

Gabriel smiling, Gabriel laughing, Gabriel caring for him, worrying about him, Gabriel just _being there._

Sure, it was far from perfect. Kali being there wasn´t perfect, not having actual plans for the future wasn´t perfect and opening up about reeducation was just plain horrible, but still Balthazar would have without a second thought traded his life for those few hours with the brother he always looked up to.

So how, Balthazar asks himself shaking, with tears still burning his eyes, hurting all over and drowning in guilt for escaping when Gabriel did not, how did it all go down the drain so fast?

He has no idea where he is and frankly doesn´t care. South America, the part of him that reeducation got to always work like it should, unhelpfully supplies and he almost screams at it to shut up and leave him alone, but then resolves that he hasn´t yet gone mad enough to scream at himself, even though he certainly isn´t very far from that point.

The last events are a blur. Discussing with the Norse wasn´t bad yet, almost funny in fact and strangely uplifting. Him and Gabriel standing together against a foe, fighting side by side, what could be better to complete a dramatic reunion? He was almost looking forward to that fight, almost enthusiastic about killing these assholes, who wanted to kill his brother, because of some stupid story and afterwards going to find Kali and kill her too, for betraying his brother and breaking his heart.

The rest is only pain and fear, morphing quickly into absolute terror. Balthazar is sure that nothing, not even reeducation, will ever let him forget that timeless, horrible and yet – in a very twisted way - beautiful moment, when he and Gabriel both thought they only had this one moment left, just one moment, before Gabriel would die one of the most horrible and painful deaths imaginable.

He forced himself to watch every single second of it, no matter how much it hurt, how his heart and spirit were shattering in a way Naomi could only dream of achieving. If Gabriel had to die like this, it was the most important thing in the world to let him know that he wasn´t alone. That Balthazar was there for him to the very end, even if he couldn´t reach him; that Gabriel was still important, still loved, even if most of the people he had ever loved himself, had turned on him.

Balthazar still can´t process what happened next. He was just praying for this to be over quickly, so Gabriel wouldn´t have to suffer so much and then suddenly Gabriel was laughing and the Norse were gaping and Frigga released his grip on him just an inch…

He believes that the oil didn´t work for some reason and that Gabriel is alive. He believes that, but believing isn´t the same as knowing. He should have ran to Gabriel, should have killed Hoder, saved his brother, should have done _something_ , instead of losing it and fleeing madly without so much as a destination, leaving Gabriel alone.

He believes Gabriel is alive, but he scared out of his mind, that that´s just something his brain made up to cope. Maybe Gabriel laughed out of despair, driven mad by the pain. Maybe Frigga´s grip lessened, because she didn´t think him important anymore in her triumph. Maybe Gabriel never even laughed and maybe Balthazar never even got away.

If reeducation taught Balthazar one thing, it´s that your can´t trust your own mind. Not ever.

He is hiccuping violently, not sobbing like a baby, definitely not sobbing in utter shock. He pulls his arms close around him and even though he really shouldn´t feel that part of shock, he feels extremely cold and detached from the world.

 _Can humans die of emotional shock?_ , he asks himself and checks up on his vessels soul just in case, just to remember that there was a little accident with enormous archangel power being released and a building exploding over his head. It´s not his first vessel to have died and it´s more or less considered a normal thing among the angels for the vessels not to survive very long and also vessel souls have a VIP lounge in heaven reserved for them. So why is that death hitting him so hard and making him feel even more like the world is one huge mess up and he hasn´t got a snowballs chance to escape.

He doesn´t know long he cowers there, in this place that doesn´t even feel like a place, just trying to pull himself together and falling apart, again and again.

"There you are, Christian! You are hard to find, you know that? Almost had to summon you, even though I knew from where you started… Wait, where is Gabriel?"

He has her tackled to the ground within a second, heart beating so fast in his vessel, he is sure he is going to blow it up by accident, hopefully hurting her in the process. He is so eager to hurt her, desperate to hear that bitch scream in pain, that even Naomi would have backed off from him, declaring him a psychopath.

"You dare ask that? You dare turn up here and act as if I should be happy to see you, when you sold him, broke his heart and gave them the means to kill him in the worst way possible? THEY WERE GOING TO BURN HIM, KALI, BURN HIM ALIVE BECAUSE OF YOU AND YOU DARE TURN UP HERE? YOU SEARCH FOR ME? HOW STUPID CAN YOU BE?"

He wanted to end that speech by shoving his blade into her heart, but realizes belatedly, that it got thrown out of his hand when Gabriel blew up the house and then got picked up by Frigga of all people and that that psycho has still got it. He opts for punching her in the face instead, which results in a satisfying crunch, but her being a goddess has most certainly no effect on her true form.

Speaking of true form, hers has a bit too many arms for his liking, as she struggles to get out of his grip, but he doesn´t let go, doesn´t even flinch, when she gets a few good hits at him. He may not be a god like her, not even an archangel like Gabriel, but he will be damned if he let´s her get away. This ends here and now, even though he has no idea how he is suppose to end her without his blade and with his grace still weak from Gabriel´s accident.

She actually tries to set him on fire and he screams at her in his true voice, his weakened grace flaring, as the ground shakes beneath them. He wants to kill her, _needs_ to kill her, but he knows that he can´t hold her much longer. It would be another thing with his angel blade and on full power, but while Gabriel healed his vessel, his grace suffered by having to fend of an enormous blow and there aren´t many angels, who can fix grace. He isn´t even sure how he is holding down Kali at the moment. Probably pure stubbornness, with a dash of bloodlust.

He screams again, out of frustration that he´ll have to let Kali go sooner or later. The moment she realizes he is mostly bluffing and can´t do more than effect seekingly blow up a few windows or rip the asphalt, he is lost. Can´t the world be on his side for just one freaking moment?

Kali has gone surprisingly limp, but disappointingly she still is very much alive. "I think this is stalemate", she observes calmly, as if they were talking about the weather, not fighting to the death. "I can´t get away, you can´t kill me, so why don´t we do this like I wanted to do in the first place. You listen when I talk and in return I won´t try to get free anymore. Deal?"

"I thought you said you couldn´t get free anyway", Balthazar grunts, now fully bluffing, since she very well could, if she tried a bit longer. Honestly, her stopping to defend herself is maybe the best result he can achieve right now, but he isn´t interested at all in what she might have to say. He is sick of her voice and doesn´t want to hear lies and stupid excuses. What did Gabriel ever see in her?

"I can still hurt you", she hisses. "And maybe you´ll want to hear this, so shut it and listen. Yes, I told Baldur about Loki being Gabriel..."

"You just lost the right to even talk to me"

"Oh, what do you want to do, Christian, punch me in the face again?"

"It´s Balthazar!"

"Calm down, Balthy, I..."

He breaks his vessels hand with that punch and doesn´t regret it at all. She barely manages to suppress her scream, which means that he got through to her true form, which is satisfying, but also that he subconsciously used his grace again, which goes more into the direction of horrifying, since he needs every drop right now. Still she won´t shut up and he kind of gives up. Despite himself, he is curious how she will try to wriggle out of this.

"I told Baldur, yes, but I didn´t know about that stupid story and also I didn´t think Gabriel would return so quickly"

"Were you just spitting his identity out to everyone, or what?"

"No, Baldur came by by chance… okay, we kind of were together, but I wanted to end it when Lo...Gabriel turned up the first time. Then I found out he had lied about his identity for centuries and you crazy angels turned up and left with him… and when Baldur turned up, I told him without thinking much about it. Don´t say you wouldn´t tell anyone!"

"Not the point!"

"Alright, I knew I had fucked up, when I felt him in Bali. So I went outside to look and throw him out, but then it was three of them and they knew how to kill me – opposite to you by the way-, so I gave them the olive oil, I tricked you with, told them it was holy oil and got out of the line. I thought that trick would give you enough time to escape, if it came to it, but apparently not. They still have Gabriel?"

Balthazar doesn´t answer. Well, there´s an explanation, the explanation he has craved for, to be able to rationalize his feeling, that his brother didn´t end as a pile of ashes. He can barely suppress a grin. If Kali is telling the truth – and well, she doesn´t really have a reason to do so, but still – then he can save Gabriel and they can eat sweets together as much as they want and watch horrible TV and talk about heaven how it used to be… damn, he just wants to get Gabriel back, wants to see him smile, to make sure his brother is alright.

He will probably regret this later, but he allows his heart to swell with hope.

"So they have him"

"Yeah, but I´m going to safe him", Balthazar announces and immediately curses himself. This came out so cheesy, she practically has no choice but make fun of it.

"While sitting on my chest? Alone against three gods? Sorry sweetie, but one way or another you´ll have to let me go"

He grinds his teeth in frustration, knowing that she is right. He´ll never be able to save Gabriel on his own, much less without letting Kali go. He is out of options and it makes him want to scream and punch something, or preferably someone.

There is an option actually, the most obvious option in the world and it has been in his mind from the very moment he got free from Frigga, but he has been pushing it away again and again. He doesn´t want to do this. He just got out, to come crawling back definitely wasn´t anywhere near his plan.

But going back to heaven might be the only way to get revenge on Kali and save Gabriel. And it´s his home after all, he shouldn´t hesitate like this, he is wasting precious time, when there is a perfectly good solution available.

Only that it isn´t perfectly good and he isn´t sure if he can consider heaven his home after all that was done to him there.

" _Balthazar, that´s like rule number one!",_ he hears Gabriel say again, so much urge and worry in his voice, not quite able to grasp what has been done to his little brother over centuries. " _If a country has "democratic" in it´s name, it certainly is a dictatorship and if someone says "reeducation" or some other fancy word, that sounds like brainwash the second time you_ _think_ _about it, you can bet it´s self righteous torture. In both cases you run and never look back, got that?"_

And certainly don´t run back, once you got away.

Maybe they will reeducate…

 _Torture_ Gabriel is correcting him in his head and even though he never said those words, it sounds so much like him, Balthazar suspects the bond for a second. _It´s torture what was done to you Balth, and by calling it reeducation, you only repeat the self excuse of the people that did it, till you believe it yourself. But here is no excuse for torture. There is no excuse for what they did to you._

Maybe they will _torture_ him for running away with Gabriel. Since he brings them Kali and news of Gabriel being alive they probably won´t, but they will certainly keep an eye on him.

And one day, sooner or later, there will be that feeling again, that feeling that someone just ripped a massive hole in his past and there will be those quick surreptitious looks from the other angels and that insecurity and self-doubt, ripping him apart bit by bit.

One thing that made the last day so wonderful to him and that gave him the strength to tell Gabriel about reeducation, was the hope of never having to experience that horrible crushing feeling of loss again, without even knowing what was taken from him and if he is even still himself.

He got out, which is something he is barely able to progress yet and the mere thought of going back to heaven is making his stomach churn. Gabriel wouldn´t want him to either, Gabriel would tell him to stay away from Michael at all costs, to stay out of this mess.

But he can´t do this on his own and if he doesn´t go back to heaven, Gabriel will die. Sooner or later the Norse will kill him and what they might do to him before… Balthazar swallows hard. He is afraid of reeducation, but maybe it´s worth it, if he gets to safe Gabriel´s life. Only if the other angels safe Gabriel, they´ll want him to stay in heaven. And imagining Gabriel in what heaven has become over time, is near impossible.

Kali is taunting him, but he doesn´t listen anymore. It´s Gabriel´s life against his – and maybe Gabriel´s - freedom. And expressed like that, it isn´t really a choice anymore. He just can´t let his brother die, no matter how much his instincts scream against letting heaven gain control over him again.

"You are out options, just admit it!", Kali drawls and Balthazar summons all courage and strength he has left and yanks them both to heaven.

Or tries to at least. Kali has figured out his intent within seconds and it fighting him with all she has. Her finger are _burning,_ digging into him and he feels like he is falling apart from the inside, his grace failing and all he can do is trying to hold his already shaky flight just one second more, just one second.

He needs to land somewhere close to other angels or he isn´t going to last for a second against Kali, but with his luck he is going to crash right in front of Zachariah or Naomi and he can´t allow that to happen, needs to calibrate, needs to…

And suddenly he is lying on the floor of one of the bright white corridors, Kali on top of him and there are Samandriel and Josiah starring at them and moment is just absolutely surreal.

"Is that…?", Samandriel gasps over the bond, the same moment he is saying it out loud and pointing at Kali. "Yes!", Balthazar manages a weak shout, unable to believe that he actually made that flight without dying and even landed in front of someone he likes. "Yes, she is! Get her!"

There is no more urging needed. Kali tries to flee of course, but within moments the corridor is full of angels, angel radio working nowhere better than in heaven. Balthazar ends up somewhere on the edge of the fight, leaning heavily against a door with "Arthur Douglas 1888-1943" written on it and deciding not to point out to the other angels that Kali didn´t in fact kill Gabriel, till they have her secured. That bitch betrayed them to the Norse after all, she deserves this.

The struggle is coming to an end fairly quickly. Kali may be a goddess of destruction and able to turn almost everything into a weapon, but fighting thirty enraged angels in heaven, can´t end well for anyone. "Samandriel, get Michael", Uriel is shouting through the corridor.

"Should we really disturb him in the garden?", Samadriel asks, clearly not keen on getting the suicide task and Balthazar listens up. The garden? Michael is in the garden? What on earth is going on? "He´ll have all our heads, if we have this abomination and don´t call him immediately", Uriel hisses back. "Now go!"

Samandriel vanishes and Balthazar closes his eyes for a moment, trying to figure out how the hell he is feeling and what he is even supposed to feel. While going back to heaven definitely felt like knowingly going back into a trap, he can´t deny that he is glad to have Kali contained. Glad to have other angels around him, especially the ones like Samandriel. He should probably talk to the younger angel later, good kid that one and he just got it bad having to deal with crazy archangels. With those thoughts Balthazar allows himself to slightly drift off.

When he comes back around again, a very familiar figure is standing over him, looking at him slightly confused and Balthazar just freezes, not really knowing how to react, not sure if he should hope for another miracle, when his little brother already pulled so many in the past. "Balthazar", Castiel is saying slowly, as if he just figured something out and a warm feeling spreads in Balthazar´s chest, despite everything else going on.

"You remember me?", he croaks out and Castiel is stares at him, like he always does when something confuses him and even does the freaking head tilt. "Of course", he says, like Balthazar is being really slow. "Why shouldn´t I?"

 _Oh, maybe because Naomi wiped your mind clean and I was really scared she destroyed you for good this time._

"No reason", Balthazar answers, barely resisting the urge to get up with his last strength, hug Castiel as tight as possible and never let him go again. "No reason at all. Just… can you stay with me for a bit? Just until Michael arrives and I have to figure out how to tell him about this mess, without getting exploded"

"I should go back on duty", Castiel replies, looking around with a hint of nervousness in his eyes and seeming like he is going to vanish any moment now. "I shouldn´t have left in the first place"

"Are you serious?", Balthazar burst out, suddenly desperate for him to stay and not sure how he can handle any of this on his own. He will have to talk to Michael about Gabriel, while the archangel will be more than eager to rip Kali apart and if that´s not a tricky situation, even if he were on full power and not feeling like shit, he doesn´t know what is. "Cassie, the whole corridor is full of people and no one is going back on duty, everyone wants to see what Michael will do, so relax, there won´t be consequences. Just five minutes. Please"

"I suppose..." Castiel sounds still on edge and after all that Naomi probably drilled into him subconsciously, who can blame him? It´s a freaking miracle, that he´s still able to even consider breaking orders. "I suppose I could stay for a bit"

And Balthazar leans back against the wall, breathing out while the world becomes a marginally better place.

By the time Michael and Raphael arrive, some kind of order has been established in the narrow corridor, with far too many angels pressed into it.

Kali is being held right in the middle by four angels, the others forming a circle, that´s more of a double lined oval to make more people fit0, around them. Balthazar is the only one sitting, leaning to the wall quite close to Kali, and Castiel is standing at his side like a wary watchdog, not even contemplating to leave anymore.

The archangels seem pretty ruffled, Balthazar notices with a bit of surprise and shock. Michael looks almost insecure, like he has lost all footing and is struggling to gain it again, and Raphael… Balthazar isn´t quite sure what to make of Raphael. His whole posture has changed and he is standing next to Michael, not behind him. Still, with the mindless-soldier-shell almost vanished, he too looks uncomfortable, like he has ditched one role, but has no idea what his new one is going to be and how he is going to fit in the whole play.

Balthazar has no idea if those changes are good or bad for him, but for the first time in years the archangels don´t seem like something alien, cold and untouchable. They seem real, alive somehow.

Michael goes straight for Kali and the corridor grows as quiet as a tomb. Not even Kali dares to make a sound, or quip about the situation, starring up at the oldest archangel with wide eyes.

Balthazar is very aware that disturbing Michael now is the stupidest thing one could possibly do, but he has waited for too long already. It´s not like he doesn´t want to see Kali suffer, but Michael certainly won´t make it quick and they don´t have time for this. Gabriel doesn´t have time for this. So he pushes himself up, only wavering slightly and drops the grenade, without leaving himself any time to think about the stupidity of the move.

"Gabriel is alive"

In the silence the words hit like a bomb, all eyes turning on him, but no one quite daring to say something acknowledging the possibility. They all heard Gabriel die after all. If this is just Balthazar going crazy, better not to get excited.

And then Michael turns and simply says "I´m aware" and the corridor explodes, as the emotions become impossible to suppress.

That was absolutely not the response Balthazar was expecting and nothing he was remotely prepared for. He has steeled himself for a discussion with an unwilling and grieving Michael, but "I´m aware"? He has so many questions about that one, but since he could formulate them anyway, he forces himself to wait until Michael and Raphael have got the other angels to quiet down again, then jumps right into it, letting himself get carried away.

"Are you also aware he has been captured by Norse Gods wanting to kill him? Are you aware that they wanted to burn his wings with holy fire and it´s only thanks to Kali that he didn´t die a horrible death? - Oh stop grinning Kali, you still betrayed him and didn´t move a finger while they took us- He is still in danger and he needs to be saved Michael, are you aware of that?"

Michael physically recoils, looking like he has been hit in the face and going pale so drastically Balthazar almost feels sorry for him. He can´t remember seeing another angel reacting so strongly and outwardly emotional since Lucifer´s rebellion, let alone an archangel and the fact that Michael was the one who violently taught them all to keep their emotions in and never let them show, makes the scene kind of pitiful and absurd.

"No, I´m not… I should have noticed, why didn´t I notice, why do I never notice?...", Michael is muttering almost to himself and at that point all the younger angels, who only know him as the cold leader, are way beyond confused and freaked out. This just isn´t the Michael they know anymore, this is someone else, someone broken and confused and they have no idea how to deal with this new Michael.

As long as the archangels behaved like they were above it all, it was easy to just ignore their problems and their difficult position, obeying them and secretly more or less hating it. The positions were clear, Michael was the leader and the others had to obey, but they didn´t have to look after him either. With Michael behaving like this, it´s impossible to ignore that he also has feelings and isn´t that different from the rest of them. It´s impossible to ignore his problems, because that´s easier than dealing with them.

Kali is clearly enjoying the show of Michael beating himself up, but there is something more in her eyes, Balthazar suddenly realizes, something calculating, knowing…

"I think you should ask Kali about that", he shoots in the dark and Kali´s briefly horrified expression tells him it was a hit.

"Why couldn´t I feel my brother, when he needed me? Why do I still can´t feel him?", Michael presses out, eyes blazing.

"Who knows?", Kali shrugs.

Balthazar would tell Michael to hurry up, because Gabriel is still very much in danger, but the oldest archangel seems very aware of that. It´s just that Michael apparently still can´t feel the bond and without the bond it will be very difficult to find Gabriel.

"I only ask this once more", Michael says and the tone of his voice is going to hold the angels in line for the next months way better than the threat of reeducation. "Why. Can´t. I. Feel. My. Brother?"

"You know you´ll basically declare war with Hindu mythology, if you attack me?", Kali shoots back.

And Michael _smiles._

The next five minutes are one of the most terrifying experiences of Balthazar´s life. He wants to look away, but it is strangely fascinating to watch Michael expertly carve Kali up, without batting an eye. _Is this what reeducation looks like?_ He can´t help but ask himself. _Is this what they do to us?_

And later when Kali is on the ground, cursing them all with breaking voice and Michael just wipes off his blade and hisses: "Do I look like I care?" Balthazar remembers again, why he was terrified of Michael, terrified of going back to heaven. He got a glimpse of the Michael beneath all the shells today. But the shells are still strong and Michael has long fallen off the edge. Sure, this is to safe Gabriel, but the routine and brutal efficiency with which Michael tortures, is just sickening.

Balthazar can feel his knees giving in and by the time he realizes, that his weakness isn´t only coming from fearing Michael, it´s too late and he barrels right into Castiel. His brother must have caught him, at least Balthazar doesn´t feel like he hit the floor, but suddenly he is there, lying in Castiel´s arms and starring up to the ceiling without really seeing it.

Castiel is calling his name and some other angels are too and somewhere in the background Kali is sobbing, but it all feels like it´s happening on another world.

Then suddenly someone is commanding the other angels to step away and Balthazar recognizes Raphael. He sees the archangel kneeling down next to him and Castiel and feels Castiel tense behind him, obviously not trusting Raphael, but thankfully not stupid enough to say that out loud.

Not like Balthazar trusts Raphael either. He doesn´t know if anyone does, Raphael being the mindless soldier, who sends people to reeducation on Michael´s command without blinking an eye.

"What happened to his grace?", Raphael is asking sharply. "That must have been an attack of considerable force… Castiel, stop this nonsense now and let me touch him!"

Balthazar is quite glad that Castiel is shielding him in the way he does, even more since it means that reeducation really didn´t break him, but sadly blocking Raphael isn´t an option either. He doesn´t know if Castiel remembers, but he remembers Raphael being a healer once, no, _the_ healer and if anyone can fix this quickly-and Balthazar wants to be fixed quickly, he has to save Gabriel after all- it´s the archangel.

"Cassie, stop it", he whispers, just to feel suddenly very afraid when his little brother reluctantly lets go and Raphael looms over him. Sure, Raphael was a healer once, someone you could trust unconditionally and he has looked a bit more like it, after coming from the garden with Michael, but still that was a long time ago and the Raphael Balthazar has known for most of his life is someone you don´t want to have power over you, while being defenseless.

"Hold still", Raphael commands and Balthazar closes his eyes, shaking and expecting pain, but when the archangel touches his head all he feels is warmth and darkness softly engulfing him and his last clear thought is, that maybe there is still hope for all of them, if Raphael can go back from being Michael´s brainwashed instrument to being a kind healer.


	19. Chapter 18

It takes a sweet while for the Norse to process the holy fire failure, but the moment the realization hits Frigga looses it, starting to scream incoherently and curse Kali, while Hoder just lets his mother´s rant wash over himself with the air of someone having to put up with this all the time, concentrating instead on pressing the blade on Gabriel´s throat just hard enough to break the skin, but not so hard as to cause real damage. It doesn´t work too well, because Gabriel is still moving much more than advisable someone in his situation and his movements are incredibly hard to predict for the blind God.

Gabriel doesn´t do that intentionally of course, no one would be that much of an idiot, but somehow he still can´t stop laughing from pure relief that he is not going to be burned to a crisp and that Balthazar has escaped. He is feels way too lightheaded, almost stoned, which would at least explain why he laughs even harder, when he realizes the oil is still burning and the fire is slightly tickling his wings.

Just seconds ago he was absolutely terrified that he was going to being burned alive and now he is laughing about fire burning less than half an inch above his wings tickling him. Of course it´s fire that can´t hurt him, but it still plays into his new "I-got-stoned-with-Balthazar-on-the-divans,-the-rest-never-happened" theory.

That theory would at least offer an explanation concerning why Michael and the other angels didn´t react to his agony and apologies at all. Not that he can really ask anything of his brother anymore, after selfishly causing him such agony- he thinks of Balthazar´s lying motionless in the rubble again and his breath hitches painfully-, but still… It would have been nice to have his brothers still care about him a bit at least. Just...nice.

He abruptly stops laughing at these thoughts, almost exactly when Frigga yells at Hoder to shut him up, thereby giving her unintentionally a sense of achievement. Well, he´ll correct her about that one later, when his heart stops feeling like he got in contact with holy fire after all.

He forces himself to think about something positive. Like Balthazar escaping. Yes, that´s a good one. His little brother got away and he can´t help but grin at the thought. No matter what Frigga and Hoder will do to him now, they have lost their leverage against him and he has the best kind of positive thought to cling to. Which means they have already lost.

His thoughts must have been a tiny bit obvious, because Frigga slaps him across the face threatening that they will get Balthazar back and let him suffer twice as much for running away, but the threats are so unrealistic and obviously for show, that Gabriel barely listens. Balthazar is out of reach. He knows it. Frigga knows it. She would probably have slapped him anyway for one thing or another. So best just wait for an opportunity and don´t tempt the Norse too much to use the two angel blades, they have taken from him and Balthazar, because while the thought of being cut by angel blades doesn´t invoke the same uncontrollable panic as holy fire does, that stuff can still kill him.

As if he had read his thoughts, Hoder decides he can speak once more today, without getting struck by lightening, or whatever the blind God is afraid will happen to him, if he dares say more than Baldur does. "We should kill him now"

There it is, plain and simple, the reason why Hoder is way more scary and dangerous than Frigga and Baldur. The two of them are drama queens, who like far too much to make a big show and hear themselves talk, thereby easy to turn into a villain-talks,-while-hero-escapes cliche.

Hoder barely talks at all and if he wants to kill someone, he simply does it right there and then, without making a show of it or allowing for some kind of last chance. The only reason why he hasn´t killed Gabriel immediately is, as Gabriel realizes now, that he is desperate for attention and approval from his mother, who only ever looks at Baldur, taking her other son for granted, or even seeing him as a constant risk. The holy fire plan, definitely wasn´t from Hoder, but he would have done it, even if Frigga hadn´t showed up again, just to please her.

And isn´t that the shittiest and most relatable thing in the world, trying to please a parent at all cost, because no matter how silent and creepy Hoder is, burring every emotion inside, he still is a person in need of someone to look at him and say "Well done" once in a while.

Gabriel wonders how Michael would behave, if their Father were constantly with them, but only giving His attention to one of them, Michael not being the chosen one.

He wonders how he himself would behave.

Frigga doesn´t react at all to her son´s objection at first and when she finally does, she smiles at him and says: "We can wait till Baldur has recovered enough to do it. At least like that it can be your brother´s kill, it should have always been his, don´t you think?"

 _No,_ Gabriel thinks angrily, not even sure why he reacts so violently to Frigga´s reasoning, as if she were neglecting him. He should be on Frigga´s side, since waiting for Baldur will stall more time and with Hodor in control, he would have been dead the moment he pulled Balthazar out of the rubble, allowing the blind god to sneak up on him. _It´s just a stupid story, but if you take it for face value, I shouldn´t be Baldur´s to kill. Yes, Baldur is the one who ends up dead, but he isn´t the victim, not really._

Because there is a second lesson he learned that horrible moment when he thought Balthazar was dead.

Death is nothing against the crippling guilt that comes with accidentally killing someone you love.

But Hoder doesn´t say anything against his mother, just hauling Gabriel up to his feet and throwing him against Frigga. "Then I´ll get him now" he announces, ignoring his mother´s protest about how he should give his wounded brother some time alone and vanishing presumably to Asgard.

"Your little bird is leaving the nest?", Gabriel taunts, when he is alone with Frigga. "About time too. You try so hard to keep them under your wing, I´ll not be surprised, if he shots you in the back one day, just to be free. And frankly, he´ll be right about tha...OW!"

He has hoped that getting Frigga angry would offer him an opening to escape, but she seems to be more careful after Balthazar, instead making a deep cut into his right arm with the angel blade.

"You are my son´s to kill", Frigga says infuriatingly calm "but that doesn´t mean I can´t get my revenge too"

…

When Balthazar surfaces again, the pain is gone and his grace feels intact, but the corridor is empty, expect for Castiel, who is still kneeling next to him. "What happened? Where is Raphael? Where is Kali? Where is everyone?", he gasps out, just to find Castiel´s palm pressed against his forehead and an artificial calm running through him, drowning out his sudden fear.

Castiel doesn´t comment on the almost panic attack, just looks questioningly at his brother and when the other Balthazar nods to confirm that he is fine and that it won´t happen again, the younger angel takes his hand away and says: "Raphael got called by Michael, together with some of the others, the rest are back on duty. I think Kali broke, but I didn´t really see what happened. I don´t know if I want to"

"You definitely don´t want to", Balthazar says decisively, his thoughts already racing. So either Kali didn´t break and Michael got so radical, he didn´t want everyone to see it, or did something like bringing in Naomi, that would basically amount to the same thing, or Kali broke and the others are already off searching for Gabriel.

Which means he has to get himself together quickly, because he definitely wants to be there at Gabriel´s rescue. Not just to see to Gabriel being alright – although he absolutely needs to do that too obviously– but also to tell his brother that the presence of the other angels is okay and that he doesn´t need to go back to heaven if he doesn´t want to, to prevent Gabriel from panicking and blindly running again. He just hopes he is right about Gabriel´s going back to heaven being a choice.

"Do you know where Michael went?", he asks Castiel. "The garden", the younger angel answers, without hesitating. Balthazar doubts that someone officially told that to him, but then, the archangels aren´t exactly hard to find over the bond and the younger one often trace them over it, even though Michael usually gets upset, when someone uses it to follow him.

"Thank you. Now just stay here and I´ll look into this", he tells Castiel, only to be met by a frown. "You want to find Gabriel", his brother states. "I understand that, but Raphael told me, to take care of you till this is over and I say you were gravely injured and should rest for a while" "Well, if you want to take care of me, guess you´ll have to follow me", Balthazar grins, fearing for one second that he has gone to far, when he sees Castiel´s expression. Little Cassie would have followed him everywhere without a second thought, but little Cassie got killed by being brainwashed way too many times and while he has had some indications that there are still traces of the old Castiel left, the controlled part should still be stronger and could kick his ass right now.

He can barely believe his luck, or marvel appropriately at Castiel´s continuous resistance against reeducation, when his little brother joins him, after only a few seconds of hesitation. "I barely remember Gabriel", Castiel confesses, while they make their way to the garden "but what I remember is good" Balthazar clenches his fists without being aware of it, because Castiel should really have those memories and it is a miracle that he still has any left with how he has been treated, but he manages a little smile nonetheless. "Don´t you worry", he tells his brother. "You´ll get to make enough memories of him, after we´ve rescued him"

Balthazar´s memories of the garden are fuzzy to say the least. There is one of him being very young and rolling in the grass all day, gasping with laughter, because Gabriel thought it a great idea to start a tickle war. There is one of a race with a few angels of his age, but since two of them died in Lucifer´s rebellion and one joined Lucifer, that memory always comes with mixed feelings. His most treasured one, involves him, Gabriel, a waterfall and a very soaked Michael and that one is really great, but there isn´t much more than those three memories and that´s kind of depressing.

Actually there is a fourth one, of The Day, when Gabriel went missing after the Michael-Lucifer prize fight and Balthazar searched for his brother for hours, desperate and afraid, only to have his last hopes crushed and fall into total devastation for a few days. He refused to believe that Gabriel was dead, no matter what anyone told him and ignoring that there was a body, the archangels were sure was legit, but he still missed his brother enormously.

He is strangely angry at Naomi, for not taking that fourth memory from him. He could have done without that one.

Stepping into the garden again after what seems like eternity and without permission is frightening and exciting at the same time. He doesn´t remember enough to make good comparisons about how the garden has or might have changed, but he recognizes that old feeling of peace and safety almost immediately, wrapping itself around him like a security blanket.

Home.

He had forgotten he actually has a home.

He looks at Castiel, who is silently taking in his surroundings, a smile slowly forming on his face and his eyes visibly brightening. It´s far from the unbound joy he radiated as a fledgling seeing earth for the first time, this is far more silent and serene, but the joy is there nonetheless, hidden in layers and layers of reeducation induced solemnity, but still there and that´s what really matters.

"Last one on the hill is a demon", Balthazar suddenly shouts, feeling like his body belongs to someone else, someone younger, someone without worries and the next moment they are chasing each other like they used to do as fledglings, the whole world forgotten for one blessed moment, which ends rather quickly, when someone out of nowhere grabs Balthazar´s collar and yanking him back violently.

"What in Father´s name do you think you are doing?", Michael hisses to his ear and it takes Balthazar one very surreal moment to realize that this isn´t the same Michael, who could be swayed by puppy eyes and that he is being held by a very pissed off archangel, who was just torturing a Hindu goddess.

The situation goes from funny to terrifying very quickly and he feels like violently crashing after getting high.

The worst thing is that Michael is right. Gabriel is still a prisoner of two or three psychopaths. He is probably suffering right now, he could get tortured, he could be _dead_ and Balthazar is casually playing tag with Castiel. What the hell was he thinking?

A wave of nausea hits him suddenly and with so much force, that for one moment he is seriously concerned about accidentally vomiting on Michael´s feet and creating the most ridiculous reason ever to be sent to reeducation in the process.

"I...We...I wanted to help save Gabriel", he gasps out, shooting a quick glance to Castiel, who seems to be frozen in shock, not even sure what he is trying to communicate to his brother. Running would probably do more harm than good, since Michael is well aware of both of them being there.

"By behaving like fledglings?", Michael´s voice is freezing the air and Balthazar feels like he is going to burst into chips of ice on spot. "You go back to your garrison now, or..."

"Michael", Raphael suddenly interrupts, giving Balthazar his second serious shock within thirty seconds, because A) he totally didn´t see the other archangel there and B) Raphael is interrupting Michael, and seriously now, what on earth happened between the archangels?

"It´s not their fault that they lost control, that reaction to the garden is quite common for younger angels, especially if they aren´t used to it. You feel the effects too, even if it´s not that strong, don´t you?", Raphael continues to defend them and amaze Balthazar

"They still sneaked in!", Michael bursts out, a fire burning in his eyes. "I can´t allow that, I never allowed that!"

"We don´t have time now" Raphael is urging Michael, desperate to change the topic. "As soon as we get the location of the beach out of Kali, we are going, you said so yourself"

"Why do you want to go to the beach?", Balthazar blurts out. "You seriously think they are still there, even after I got away to tell about it?"

"It appears so", Raphael explains, clearly ignoring Michael, who is probably shouting over the archangel bond at him, demanding an explanation why he even explains this to the lesser angels. "Kali told us she used that place multiple times as a hideout and heavily protected the whole beach, cutting it off the rest of the island in a way that even interrupts telepathic connections between gods. That seems to be the reason why we couldn´t hear you or Gabriel and since we still can´t hear him, even though he is probably in distress, we think they are still there"

"Oh", Balthazar manages, feeling incredibly stupid and like he just wasted way too much time. Why did no one check out the beach just to be sure? They just assumed the Norse wouldn´t by stupid enough to stay, but if no one thought of that possibility, it wasn´t that stupid after all.

"Then I think, I´m the one, who knows the way. Let´s go!"

…

Gabriel finds himself praying that Hoder will come back with Baldur soon and that isn´t a good sign. Not at all.

Even more so since Baldur´s return will probably mean his death, but at the moment he doesn´t even care about that very much anymore.

Frigga is just mental, he decides, hanging panting in her grip, while she is happily experimenting on how deep she can cut him with an angel blade without actually killing him. And he always used to wonder about Odin drinking so much… With that kind of wife at home, who could blame him? The great and mighty Odin probably never got a say in anything behind closed doors.

Really, the only positive thing he can find about the situation is, that he somehow managed to tuck his wings in again. And Frigga can do with him whatever she wants, he won´t ever show them again. She has no leverage anymore and that means his first priority is to protect his wings. Oh, and his grace of course.

"Careful with the blue stuff", he slurs out, because he just keep his mouth shut, no matter the consequences. "If you don´t want to kill me, that has to stay inside, you hear me?"

Actually he could probably survive without his grace, but he really hopes Frigga doesn´t know that, because he has no intention of going human, at least definitely not with her nearby. Also he isn´t even sure how turning human works with archangels and he has never heard of it working with the grace being cut out bit by bit, so, who knows, maybe he is even telling the truth.

Frigga snorts in response. "I expected a bit more of you, _Loki",_ she musses loudly. "Always unearthing everyone´s dirty little secrets, swaggering around like you were better than us, when actually it´s so easy to take you down. But I guess that was to be expected, with you not even being a god"

 _I am an archangel_ Gabriel thinks, his head swirling, as he stares at a spot of grace that has dropped on the sand right in front of him, strangely having an almost hypnotic effect. _That´s almost the same_ _concerning our powers_ _, but it´s not like you are ever gonna get that, so why am I even bothering?_

On another day, with other circumstances, he would have at least been equal to her, but that uncontrolled blast from earlier has taken a lot out of him and every cut she gives him, that he can´t heal immediately, lessens the chance of him ever getting out of this hell. He won´t give her the triumph of breaking him though.

He thinks of Lucifer in the cage, of Raphael, of Balthazar, of Castiel, of all the angels who were pushed through reeducation again and again, but are still _there_ in some way. If they can manage that, he can push through this easy peasy, right?

He is praying _for_ this to be over, but he can´t get himself to pray _to_ anyone in particular. His father never answered, so why should he now? Michael didn´t answer, so why should he now? No, better pray to the universe in general, to have a better chance that _someone_ is listening.

"Well, I expected more of you too, Frigga" Damn, he really can´t get his mouth under control. "I mean, how exactly did I miss your career turn to maniac? What exactly are you going to tell Odin when you get home? Not like your marriage isn´t already ruined, but I doubt he is going to be pleased, with how you are behaving here"

She stabs him in the leg and doesn´t pull the blade out again.

"He should be pleased, if he cares for his children at all! I have looked for ways to protect Baldur since he was born, but that oaf of a husband always held me back from the only real safety, saying that you were one of us, when you weren´t! But I don´t expect you to understand that, that´s another problem with you monotheists. You never have a mother, your father barely behaves like it, so how should you know what it is like to be loved as a child and to love a child. How should you know that kind of bond?"

 _He is in the garden, crawling into Michael´s arms, after a long day of running around, his brother´s arms the safest place in the world._

 _He is training with Lucifer, his brother never loosing patience with him and impulsively pulling him into a hug, when he finally gets a difficult move._

 _He is sitting next to Raphael, chattering away about this and that and Raphael just listens to him smiling, no matter how often he repeats the same topic over and over again, more than ready to let Gabriel feel like the center of the universe._

 _He is holding little Balthazar for the first time and the fledgling is starring up at him with impossible huge eyes, needing only one moment to teach Gabriel, a whole new kind of love and devotion._

Gabriel stares up to her, mouth dry. "Actually", he says very slowly. "I might know that better than you"

She twists the blade and he doesn´t scream.

 _Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Balthazar._

 _Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Balthazar._

 _Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Balthazar._

This is some kind of prayer too. One that stopped working a long time ago, but then again, most prayers are just wishes. Wishes and the hope that there is someone left who still cares.

But apparently there is no one left, or maybe Father just has the worst humor in the universe, because that is when Hoder returns, dragging a slightly dazzled Baldur and shoving the second angel blade into his brother´s hand, an obvious: "There! Now, just end this shit!" even though Hoder doesn´t say a word as per usual.

Gabriel absentmindedly wonders what Hoder thinks of his own family and if Frigga even sees what is really going on between her sons.

He sees Frigga fuzzing about Baldur and totally ignoring Hoder once again, telling Baldur how he´ll be safe in a few seconds and they both have turned their backs to Hoder now, as if he isn´t there, as if this wouldn´t be an important moment for him too. Baldur is right in front of Gabriel, raising the angel blade, but Hoder is raising something too and all of the sudden Gabriel just _knows_ howthat story is inevitably going to end and it´s freaking poetic and cruel and absolutely ironic, something that the Trickster would come up with in one of those long lonely nights, that just wouldn´t end.

No, it´s even better than those two-o´-clock-in-the-morning thoughts, the only problem being that Hoder will wait to act till Gabriel is dead and no there is just no way he is missing Frigga´s expression, when she will finally have to look at her other son and face what she made of him.

Good thing that Hoder is the blind god and that Baldur is wielding that blade at snails pace for effect.

Gabriel pushes away all pride and screams in his true voice, before the blade even touches his skin.

"What the…?", Baldur curses, halting the blade just for one moment and that is all it takes for Hoder, who now thinks Gabriel dead and using the scream as orientation for where Baldur must be, to go through with what he probably dreamed about since Frigga ignored him for Baldur´s sake for the first time and shot his brother in the back.

Baldur falls to his knees gasping and Gabriel rips the angel blade out of his hands the moment Hoder shots again, contemplating for a moment to turn around and stab Frigga, but really, that would mean rescuing her, if her absolutely white face is anything to go by.

"I got punished for that crime all my life", Hoder says, over the sobs of his dying brother and his voice sounds neither triumphant nor shocked, just hollow, like he has reached the end of his road and there is just nothing left to break of him. "Mother, you have no idea how hard you made me wish, that I at least actually committed it"

…

Michael has been torturing himself with horrible images, since the moment he heard Gabriel was captured and in danger, definitely not made better by Death´s voice echoing over and over in his mind.

Tell me Michael, what did YOU do to him?

 _I pushed him away all those years ago, seeing him only as someone I needed to recruit, not as my brother anymore and that sent him running. I ruined heaven in a way, that made him loose the home he could have returned to. I took his brothers -our brothers- and turned them into mindless soldiers, or at least destroyed parts of their spirit. I demanded explanations from him, when we saw each other again and never intended to explain myself. I wanted him to still be that cute little fledgling, even though I was one of the reasons why he had to grow up so rapidly. I never apologized. I couldn´t bring him home. I couldn´t keep him safe. I am a monster that made him desperate enough to fake his death not once but twice to get away from me._

 _And I might loose him the third time in a week, if I don´t get to him in time and I couldn´t survive loosing him again._

These are the thoughts, that push him when he tortures Kali. He knows, it´s idiotic to turn into the monster again to save Gabriel, when Gabriel made more than clear, he would rather run forever, than have him like that, but he doesn´t know how else to save his little brother.

He is burning out. Loosing his grip.

In his mind he is sure he´ll be too late. He´ll always be too late and this could be the one time he´s too late for good.

He has horrible thoughts about Gabriel dying just before he can save him, without any chance to make anything right again. He imagines Gabriel looking up at him with glassy eyes and the last thing his little brother sees in his life is a monster.

And he would be right, Michael thinks, swallowing hard, while Kali screams, her blood flowing over his hands. But how do you stop being a monster, if there is a fire burning in you that is consuming you bit by bit if you don´t let it out in some way? A fire burning higher and hotter every second Gabriel remains in danger.

He is so scared of loosing Gabriel now that he is finally sure he has the right intentions and he knows that he´ll loose Gabriel anyway, because that´s just how the world is. He has lost all faith in a good world, in a just God, in himself.

He hasn´t prayed at all since his encounter with Death.

So Michael steels himself to find the absolute worst, sure that it will shatter what is left of him anyway, but if by some miracle Gabriel should still be alive, he owes it to his brother to be strong.

He doesn´t dare think too much about the future, too afraid that there won´t be a future for Gabriel. He has hoped to often in these past days, only to crash again, every time more painfully.

So he expected hell on that beach, his sweet little brother dead or dying, the Norse doing Father-knows-what to him. For Father´s sake, they wanted to burn his baby´s wings!

What he definitely _didn´t_ expect was arriving and finding a Norse goddess madly attacking one of the gods with an angel blade, screaming at him something like "You are not my son!", with her son or not-son fending off the blows stoically, another Norse lying dead on the ground and Gabriel sitting next to the corpse, knees pulled up tightly to his chest, looking bloody and beaten and lost, but free to move and even holding an angel blade.

Michael just freezes, unable to come up with an explanation on how the situation could possibly escalated from what Balthazar described to result in this, but not everyone shares that hesitation.

"Gabriel!", Balthazar shouts and the youngest archangel lifts his head at the younger angel´s voice, battered face visibly lightening up and the next moment the two angels are tangled into a tight hug, in which it is impossible to tell who is trying to comfort whom.

"What should we do with the Norse?", Raphael asks, catching Michael completely off guard, the oldest archangel just realizing, that he didn´t fully believe that Gabriel could actually be alive until now, the memory of his little brother dying right in front of his eyes in the thrice-damned alley being just too strong, stronger than even Death´s word.

"Just...keep them away from us for now", he manages. "It would be stupid to interrupt that fight. Let´s just see who survives, then deal with it"

He can´t look away from Gabriel, but he doesn´t dare come closer either. Balthazar seems to have absolutely no problem with that, carefully checking over Gabriel´s injuries, talking to him all the time and coaxing tired responses out of the battered archangel and suddenly Michael is jealous of the younger angel, who manages to behave so natural around Gabriel and do what his little brother needs, while he himself is frozen to the ground in fear of rejection or Gabriel suddenly vanishing into thin air or dropping dead.

He is the leader of the heavenly host, God´s oldest, responsible of all his siblings and he is scared out of his mind at the thought of facing his wounded little brother.

"Just go", Raphael says, only daring to say it out loud in front of the other angels, because the bonds don´t work on this damned beach. "You both need it"

And Michael just blinks at Raphael, thinking about how much he missed that brother, too.

"Should I go?", Balthazar asks immediately, when Michael finally gets to Gabriel, receiving an unmistakable nod from Michael and a gesture that could mean anything from Gabriel.

Then the two archangels are alone, starring at each other in a way not so different from that chance meeting on the road, that seems a lifetime away now.

Michael still has no idea what to do, fumbling for a way to tell his brother how sorry he is and also trying to get close enough to Gabriel to heal his wounds, because while they don´t seem immediately lethal, they are still excessive and, inflicted by an angel blade, shouldn´t be taken lightly.

"I think Ragnarök just got started", Gabriel blurts out, apparently unable to take the tension anymore. "Also, we might not be the most dysfunctional family in the universe"

"Really?", Michael asks, still standing a few feet away from his brother awkwardly, "I started war with the Hindu pantheon"

"I blew up a fancy summer house and almost killed Balthazar"

"I spoke with Death about you"

"I had a fight for a TV remote with… Wait, you did what? What did he tell you?"

"Why?", Michael asks, a grin slowly spreading over his face. "What did you do?"

"Miiiiiiichael!", Gabriel whines, in the same tone he used as a fledgling, when Michael told him he was too young for something.

"Gabriel, you are behaving childish and you know it", Michael gives back the standard response and suddenly all the tension between them is gone and somehow he finds himself with his arms wrapped around Gabriel´s body, his little brother curling into him just as he did as a fledgling, when everything was still fine.

"I´m sorry", Michael whispers. "I´m so sorry, but I tried better, Raphael is on the right way I think and I… I couldn´t stand loosing you one more time. I´m turning into a monster without you. Gabriel, please, could you just try and stay for a bit? I won´t hurt you, I promise"

Gabriel´s eyes are huge and full of tears, as he looks up to his older brother. "Everything hurts", the youngest archangel whispers, his strength and bravado finally spent, burying his face in Michael´s chest once again and Michael could slap himself, for doing that speech now, which sure is important some time, but Gabriel is still seriously injured, loosing blood and grace all over himself and Michael. Balthazar tried to fix as much as he could in the short time he had with Gabriel, but these are injuries are one level or two above the younger angels.

"I know", Michael whispers into Gabriel´s hair, tears threatening to fall, as he coaxes his brother to lay down in a way, that offers him a better view on his wounds and remembering just in time that sand and open wounds are a horrible combination, he is forced to pull his brother up again, flinching at the barely suppressed scream. "I know it hurts, but just try to relax. I´ll fix it, I promise. I´ll fix everything"


	20. Chapter 19

Raphael feels like he has spent the last few days balancing on a very thin wire, which is stretched over a deep abyss, the other side, where he´ll be safe, barely visible. He isn´t exactly sure when he decided to ignore the risk of falling and try to cross that chasm.

Was it in the garden, when he stood up to Michael for the first time since he can remember, bursting with emotions he couldn´t even name after all those years of emptiness? Or was it even before, when he decided to follow Michael into the garden without permission? Or was the seed planted even before that, when he heard what Michael had done to him and suddenly his emptiness and missing memories made sense in a horrible way, more twisted than he could ever have come up with on his own, and a long forgotten part of him startled awake with a roar, pushing against the layers of fear he had become so used to be trapped in, he started seeing them as a part of himself?

Anyway, the moment he set foot on that wire, he knew he only had this one chance to get across and if he failed, he would fall and never recover again. And if he tried to turn back to safety, he would probably fall anyway, or at least Michael would make sure he would never again get a chance to try and cross the chasm.

It´s an incredibly shaky balance act to stand up to Michael, to defend the younger angels, to always say the right thing, be clear enough to be taken serious, but not so clear that Michael sees his words as an attack, and every step of that act scares Raphael more than he could ever express.

It´s a dark, lurking fear, the one that has controlled him for so long and forced him to give in again and again, taking Michael´s words as law. He wants to give in to the fear, finds it so natural to give in to it, that it seems crazy just to think about keeping up the fight, a fight in which he is blind most of the time, because his worldview has been pieced together by Michael, and ripping himself lose from that, trying to find his own way and fiddling with relations of which he can´t remember how they developed in the first place, is just an absolutely insane task.

But he can´t go back, so he forces himself to go on. Step by step, even though the fear feels like fire in his guts and when it burns him to the bones he tells himself that this is just like every other fight. He can win this one just as easy as a physical one.

He can sit down next to Michael, like they are equals.

He can offer his help to Michael and thereby throw over the previous rules of their relationship using just a few sentences.

He can be skeptic, if Michael´s plans are just off base.

He can defend younger angels against Michael´s anger.

And each of these decisions terrifies him to the core, throws his mind into dark places that were pushed back far and never supposed to be found again, places where he finds himself in excruciating pain, begging for Michael to stop whatever he is doing to him, but Michael just looks at him with fire in his eyes and ice in his voice when he tells him: "You are not my brother anymore. If you want to do yourself a favor, stop whining like I would care", then goes on tearing Raphael apart piece by piece.

He wants to scream. He wants to kill Michael. He wants to take vengeance for every second his oldest brother made him suffer. He wants to hear Michael scream and cry and maybe then the fire would stop burning him out from the inside.

But for some reason he never takes action.

For some reason he stays with Michael, listens to orders and only speaks up, when he is sure it´s worth the risk. He stands by when his brother tortures Kali and even thought he cares nothing about the Hindu goddess his throat goes dry watching Michael´s cruelty and his heart jackhammers against his chest, one single thought racing through his mind over and over again.

 _This is what he did to me._

 _This is what he did to me._

 _This is what he did to me._

And then

 _Why am I still here then, standing at his side like a good little soldier?_

He doesn´t kill Michael, but is it because he chooses not to? Because he is somehow morally better than Michael? Or rather because deep down he is still a mindless soldier and a coward, unable to go against the one who has abused him for thousands of years, unable to free himself for good?

He can´t think about that now, because with a bit of bad luck, the answer will throw him off the wire and right into the chasm.

So he doesn´t think about it, or how he feels about Michael breaking in front of his eyes, or about Gabriel, who he can barely remember, pushing it all away like he is used to, till he is standing on that beach and sees Michael frozen to the spot, unable to approach Gabriel.

"Just go", Raphael urges him, without thinking about what he is saying. He spent thousands of years, thinking carefully about every word he said, turning it around in his mind again and again and not uttering it, if there was any chance that Michael could get it wrong and use it as excuse to start insulting him, and now he finds that this kind of overthinking fuels his fear even more, raising it to unbearable levels. "You both need it"

Michael blinks at him, with an unreadable expression and carefully steps closer to Gabriel and Balthazar, who both look like they aren´t planing to let go of each other any time soon.

Raphael knows that he should take command of the younger angels, as he always does when Michael is busy otherwise. He should get some order into this mess, he should sent the angels who aren´t needed with this outcome back to heaven, only leaving a few to keep an eye on the fighting Norse and then he should decide what is to be done with the survivor, then return to heaven himself, awaiting new orders…

Raphael realizes he has crushed his vessel´s fingertips so hard into his vessel´s opposite palm, that blood is flowing. He could heal that little mishap within a second, but instead he just stands and stares, watching the blood drip on the sand like the steady drop is hypnotizing him, while somewhere a universe away, Michael and Gabriel are talking and hugging and crying and making impossible promises.

Just go. You both need it.

 _What about me?_ Raphael thinks, while fear and insecurity about his position are crushing him from the inside, damaging him worse than even the fire. _What if I need it too?_

But they don´t want him, do they? He can´t count how many times Michael has told him, that he is inferior, that there is nothing between them, that he should leave him alone.

 _Mindless soldier._

 _You are not an archangel._

 _You are not my brother._

He told himself he didn´t care about anything all this time and maybe he didn´t. But those words never stopped cutting, no matter how much they became normality and they never cut deeper than they do now, as he is standing alone in the middle of the beach, the younger angels far behind him, Michael and Gabriel finding each other again in front of him.

Would anyone even miss him, if he just went away? Michael and Gabriel have got each other now and the younger angels would be glad to get rid of him.

Raphael was never as tethered to heaven and the garden as Michael was, but he never was a natural runaway like Lucifer and Gabriel either. Yet in this moment he feels what he assumes Gabriel must have felt, right before he turned his back to heaven. Heat in his stomach, threatening to burn him. Blood pounding in his ears. The feeling that something dark is right behind him, just one second away from swallowing him whole, his legs and wings aching from the urge to bolt and run until all feelings fade away into exhaustion and he can finally breathe again.

It´s just too much to bear and he almost gives in to his impulses, when a sudden thought derails him, pushing back the darkness. Despite what he thought first he actually _has_ areliable memory of Gabriel, one that he is fairly sure didn´t get tinkered with, since it´s just a few days old, formed in the warehouse, where he saw Gabriel seemingly for the first time.

" _What do you say?", the little brother, he barely remembers is asking, holding out a hand to Raphael and trying to smile for him to cover up his shock, after what they both just heard from Michael. "You come with me and we are getting out of this mess?"_

Gabriel cared about him, cared after all these years and Raphael is close to tears, because he has no idea how he deserved that kind of offer, how he deserved someone who still _cares_.

It´s like he is still balancing on the wire, scared to fall, but now Gabriel is standing on the other side of the chasm, holding out his hand and urging him to take the next step.

And suddenly Raphael is running, the chasm forgotten and then he is breathlessly dropping down next to his little brother, who is hurt and crying and curled into Michael like a fledgling and Michael is shooting him a strange look and mouthing "What are you doing here?", while pressing Gabriel closer to himself. And Raphael, to far gone to ever turn back, looks Michael straight in the eyes and with only a minimal tremble in his voice announces: "I am his brother too"

"He is hurt, this is not the time...", Michael begins, but Gabriel peaks up at the sound of the other archangel´s voice, whispering "Raphael?", through his tears and Raphael has no idea what to do and if he should touch his brother or not, but Gabriel takes away that decision by grabbing for his hand and holding it just as tight as his other hand is holding on to Michael.

"Missed you", the youngest archangel murmurs, curled between two of his older brothers, purposely not addressing one of them directly.

"Missed you too, I guess", Raphael whispers back and even thought he barely has memories of his little brother, he knows it isn´t a lie. One of the funny things about reeducation is, that no matter how carefully they erase the traces of what they took from you, the feeling that something vital is missing never stops.

They heal Gabriel on the beach, Michael letting Gabriel lean against him, while Raphael kneels in front of his brothers to have a better look.

Michael wants to bring Gabriel home first and get him more comfortable, but Raphael thinks that moving the youngest archangel now could do some serious damage and tells Michael so without hesitating, not quite sure where this new surge of confidence is coming from.

"It´s not like I want him to fly by himself", Michael hisses back, shooting wary looks around and even without the bond Raphael can feel how tense his brother is. He probably still can´t believe that Gabriel is alive and having the archangel bond cut off in this moment, is clearly driving him crazy, as is his paranoia that something horrible will happen at the last minute, if they don´t get their youngest to heaven _now._ "I can carry him, he wouldn´t even have to move"

"It would still be a strain on him and that´s the last thing we want", Raphael answers, not even looking up from the checkup he is doing on Gabriel and sharply taking in breath, when he realizes how much grace his little brother has lost. "Those wounds aren´t fatal right now, but I definitely wouldn´t start experimenting how much we can do till they _are_ "

"Leave him", Gabriel murmurs weakly into Michael´s shoulder and both of the older archangels immediately shut up to listen to him, although Raphael´s hands never stop moving, concentrating on getting the major wounds at least superficially healed, so that Gabriel won´t loose any more blood and grace at least. "He´s the healer"

For one moment Raphael is seriously confused who Gabriel is defending here, but then Michael huffs in apparent defeat, pushing Raphael´s hands away to look after the superficial wounds himself and motioning for his brother to take care of Gabriel´s grace, which is the far more complicated task and that throws Raphael completely off guard.

"Wait, since when am I the healer?", he asks, but even as he utters the words, he knows that Gabriel is probably right and it starts nagging at him, that Michael apparently not only took his past, but also his true mission. There a no old memories to support him having been a healer at some point, but he remembers how naturally healing Balthazar earlier felt, how confident he suddenly got while checking up Gabriel, almost like some part of him was certain that he knew more than Michael and that the oldest archangel would see that eventually and give him control.

Gabriel stars up at Raphael as if he just exploded, fear suddenly creeping back into the youngest archangel´s eyes and he slightly jerks away from Michael, pushing feebly again his oldest brother´s hold. He probably isn´t even doing it conciously, but Raphael still feels like a traitor for pushing his little brother back into Michael´s grip, telling him to keep still.

"Are you kidding me?" Gabriel rasps, like he is trying to shout, but his body isn´t supporting him at all. "You always were the healer! rafa´el ! Your freaking name means "God heals"! Who did you think you were?"

 _Did I tell you I wanted a comment?_

 _I am your superior and you will do what I say and you won´t question it! Ever!_

 _I was right, you are just a mindless soldier._

Just a mindless soldier.

Raphael raises his head, searching for Michael´s eyes, but his older brother´s gaze is fixed on Gabriel´s wounds and he refuses to look up, shoulders shaking so hard, Raphael isn´t sure, if his brother is crying again. They have all become creepily good at crying without making a sound over the years.

"I don´t know", he tells Gabriel, not sure why he is protecting Michael again, even though he should call him out without hesitation, but he feels like he is doing the right thing, when a bit of peace returns into the youngest archangels eyes. "I guess I didn´t think much about myself at all"

They stop talking after that. Gabriel falls into a state of unconciousness, only twitching and whimpering when Michael moves behind him, Michael stubbornly refuses to even look at Raphael, but does everything his little brother tells him to do without questioning it and Raphael is busy pushing away a new flood of emotions and feelings of emptiness, in order to dig out everything he knew about healing grace, from wherever Michael stashed it.

It feels like wading through mud and while there is still some knowledge left to recover, Raphael has no illusions at all about most memories Michael touched being destroyed forever. His hands seem to remember though, so he is pretty sure he could do this based on long practiced instincts and motor memory and probably would, if he wasn´t to scared of further injuring Gabriel, because he was too proud to ask a simple question.

He asks a few little questions in the end, only enough to feel certain that he isn´t making everything up out of nowhere and Michael seems a bit relieved to be needed, which is something Raphael tries really hard not to see with malice. _Without you taking away my memories I wouldn´t even need help_ he thinks, for once glad that the archangel bond isn´t working here, because he doesn´t want to distress Gabriel with his sudden fury. The little one deserves a bit of rest, without the past troubling him in any way.

The sun is rising, when he finally steps back, but he has no idea if that means much time has passed or not. Raphael has never really learned to keep track of time, first living from moment to moment, then from order to order. "That´s it", he tells Michael, who is still holding Gabriel close and absentmindedly stroking his little brother´s hair. "I think we did all we can do for now and if he doesn´t strain himself too much, he is going to be fine. Let´s give him a bit of rest, when he wakes up we can all go home"

Home meaning the garden, as he realized while speaking the words. Home has always been the garden.

Michael just keeps his eyes on Gabriel, who is still unconscious, but doesn´t seem to be in pain anymore. The youngest archangel looks relaxed and incredibly young, but gratefully also very alive, with his chest rising and falling softly and a bit of color returned to his cheeks.

For a moment both of the older archangels just watch their little brother breathe, then Raphael abruptly turns around, as the feeling that Gabriel and Michael are doing just fine without him and that he is being the third wheel, suddenly overwhelms him again

"I...should look after the young ones", he presses out, striding hastily away, eyes fixed on the sand.

 _Do your duty._

 _Mindless soldier._

 _You are not my brother anymore._

And Michael hasn´t even looked at him since Gabriel accidentally revealed some more of the extent of what he did to Raphael. Because he regrets it? Or is that just what Raphael tells himself and his brother doesn´t look at him, because his mindless-soldier plan just blew up and he doesn´t know what to do with Raphael now?

Wait, since when does _he_ think of Michael as his brother again? Michael is nothing more than his leader, his superior, has been for millenniums. He can´t loose it now, as nice as it is to have Gabriel back, as much as he wished to have brothers again, he has to get it together.

Remember who he really is, or he is making himself vulnerable. If you have nothing at least nothing can be taken from you. If you don´t care about anything, at least nothing can hurt you.

Mindless soldier.

"Rafa´el", Michael calls out softly and freezing mid step Raphael isn´t sure what to make of Michael´s sudden Hebrew pronunciation, but he slowly turns around, expecting an order, concerning the younger angels maybe.

Michael looks him straight in the eyes and whispers: "Thank you"

 _It was my duty,_ Raphael almost responds, but that wouldn´t be the truth, not at all. He wanted to heal Gabriel, _needed_ to heal Gabriel. He needed to do this, in order to stitch himself back together.

"Be careful with him", he answers, even though he is sure Michael will handle Gabriel like a raw egg for the next weeks anyway, but he doesn´t know what else to say without loosing his shields completely. And breaking down in front of Michael is something he just can´t do yet, can maybe never do again.

But that doesn´t mean things can´t get better he realizes, because as he lifts his head and walks away from his brothers, a warm feeling is swirling in his stomach, lifting him in a way he wouldn´t have thought possible only days ago.

 _Thank you._

And slowly the healer starts to heal.

…

After he´s given up Gabriel to Michael, Balthazar is restless, although he knows he couldn´t have healed his brother on his own. Gabriel needs archangels to take care of him, no matter how much Balthazar hates to give him to someone, he just can´t trust after all that has happened in heaven.

He is expecting to be called by someone, told that he should do something useful not just stand and stare, but Raphael, who now is officially in charge, seems to be stuck in a crisis himself and when the last archangel goes to join his brothers, no one is quite sure who is in command any more.

They watch the Norse fight for a bit, but it would feel wrong to intervene. Actually it feels wrong to even look. This is someone else´s tragedy and Balthazar is really glad that the archangels haven´t brought someone working too close with Naomi, or someone like Zachariah (Although he has long suspected that Zachariah is part of Naomi´s team) Those dicks just wouldn´t understand that it´s best not to get involved here, because of simple decency, which probably is a foreign concept to them.

In the end it´s Frigga, who missed a step in her anger and anguish. Balthazar doesn´t even blink when Hoder finishes the bitch, who tortured Gabriel, but there is still something wrong about seeing someone kill his mother and when Hoder lifts his head and realized that he has had quite an audience, there are tears in the blind god´s eyes.

They stay frozen for a moment, Hoder clearly waiting to be executed, but none of the angels moves an inch. Maybe they are waiting for orders. Maybe they feel as uncomfortable as Balthazar does.

He just has to think about Hoder pouring holy oil – yes, yes, it wasn´t holy oil, _he_ thought it was - on Gabriel´s wings and he wants to rip the bastard´s throat out. But he wasn´t blind to what was going on between Frigga and Hoder either, and damn, he knows a thing or two about being neglected, but being driven so far by it, the killing your family seems the only way to get free …

"Anyone thinks the archangels will fry us, if we let him go?", Balthazar asks into the silence, voice incredibly scratchy.

There are a few hisses like "We aren´t a democracy!" and "Since when are _you_ in charge?", but since most angels don´t really know much about Hoder and his role in all of this and no one wants to disturb the archangels at any cost, most just keep quite.

"Okay", Balthazar announces, trying to sound much more certain than he really is. "Just go and don´t bother us ever again, do you understand?"

Hodor´s blind eyes are like endless pits. "Where can I even go?", he asks, no emotions left in his voice. The corpse of his mother is lying at his feet, but he ignores it, like she ignored him his whole life. "You don´t think I can go to Asgard after this, do you?"

"I don´t care", Balthazar manages and suddenly he knows that he isn´t letting Hoder get away, never really planned to. The only way Hodor _can_ get away is death and Balthazar is refusing him exactly that. "You wanted to be free, you killed your family to get free, now live with it. I really don´t care what you do now, as long as you never touch my brother again"

 _And as long as I never have to think about whether I´m giving you another chance here, or whether this is the cruelest thing I´ve ever done._

They stand in silence for a while, Balthazar almost yearning for Hoder to say something, that gives a new twist to this whole mess, something Balthazar can cling to, to make up his mind, but Hoder never spoke much and he isn´t starting now.

His expression is unreadable as he picks up his mother´s corpse, shortly vanishes, then comes back for Baldur and vanishes hopefully forever. Balthazar wonders if he is going to give Baldur and Frigga a proper funeral, or if he is just going to throw the bodies of a cliff.

He wonders what he would have done.

Strangely after Hoder is gone, no one brings up going back to heaven, although that is probably what they should do. A strange silence has settled over the beach, with the angels standing around in groups of two or three, watching the archangels, the waves, the sky, wondering about the future. It feels like the end of something and like a beginning. It feels like a new chance, a chance for freedom, or peace, or maybe just to a catching a break.

Balthazar finds Castiel standing close to the water, staring out at the ocean. Feeling a little guilty about having lost all focus on his little brother after seeing Gabriel, he gently puts a hand on Castiel´s shoulder and is incredibly relieved, when the younger angel doesn´t pull away.

"Are you okay?", he asks quietly, getting a blink and a slightly absent "I think so" in return.

"Good", Balthazar murmurs. Knowing that he won´t get more than that, he heavily sits down on the sand and motions for Castiel to join him. The younger angel looks pretty skeptical and when he finally sits down, it doesn´t look relaxed at all, but hey, small victories are victories too.

Looking out at the water, Balthazar suddenly remembers a different time and a different beach and a grin slowly forms on his face.

"Hey Cassie, remember The Fish?"

Castiel looks confused and Balthazar´s grin quickly vanishes. Of course they would have taken a memory that so prominently features Lucifer in a good way from Castiel. Balthazar has already wondered why _he_ still has the memory. He should have expected anything, really. He should be so crestfallen because of one memory of one stupid day which…

"Did I step on that fish?"

"Yes", Balthazar almost shouts, grinning like an idiot, because somehow impossibly, Gabriel, Castiel and him have all managed to preserve that memory through the years and given how often it could have been ripped from him and Castiel it feels like a victory and not a small one. "Yes, you did"

"Well, almost, humanity exists obviously", he adds after a moment. "But that day was just great, glad you remember it"

Castiel just frowns at him. "I don´t understand what is so great about me almost destroying humanity"

"I guess everything is cute when a fledgling does it", Balthazar muses, leaning back and looking up to the stars. "Cassie, come on, just relax. Remember the stars in Galilee? We ran away just to get a longer look. Stayed all night on that roof and no one ever found out…Wait, did they find out?"

Castiel stays quiet for so long that Balthazar is already preparing to throw that memory on the way to high memories-that-seem-good-,but-are-actually-horrible pile, when the younger angel turns his head and says: "I don´t think so. I don´t have any blank spaces. Have you?"

"No", Balthazar answered, almost dizzy with luck, because Gabriel is safe and he and Castiel have found at least one untainted good memory and the world suddenly looks like there could be some more untainted memories coming up. "Remember how we used to prank Zachariah?"

"Is that why he hates me?"

"Oh, stop saying that, as if that means he is right to bully you. If he is still mad because of our fledgling pranks he is nothing but a giant prick. Okay, he _is_ a giant prick, but still…"

They talk all night about everything and nothing, filling in each others lost memories and stealing glances at the archangels. They kept watch together with the other angels and when the sun comes up Raphael comes over to them.

"How is Gabriel?", Balthazar asks immediately and maybe he is drunk or something, because Raphael, _Raphael_ of all people, actually smiles at him and Balthazar had no idea that the archangel was even capable of that.

"He will be fine, we are just giving him a bit of rest", Raphael answers and Balthazar can keep himself at the last moment from hugging the archangel, hugging Castiel instead.

Raphael freaking smiled.

Castiel has more memories left, than Balthazar would have thought possible.

Gabriel will be alright.

For one moment Balthazar allows himself to just let himself float and cherish his luck. Small victories are victories too. And all piled together, they can be huge.


	21. Chapter 20

Michael is still unable to believe it, doesn´t dare believe it, no matter how close he holds his little brother, no matter how long he watches the regular rising and falling of Gabriel´s chest.

 _He is safe_ , the oldest archangel tells himself over and over again. _He is safe and in my arms, I can stop worrying now. He is safe, he is safe, he is safe and I´ll never let him get hurt again._

But there is also that other voice, the cruel one that sometimes sounds like Lucifer, but this time just sounds like himself, the one telling him, that this is too easy. _You just found him there_ _free, sitting_ _on the beach? Miracles like that_ _never_ _happen and certainly not to you._

The voice goes on relentlessly, effortlessly ripping apart his paper-thin confidence and hope, reminding him of how he opened the garden again, when he thought Gabriel dead and saw his brothers there, laughing and playing, whole and happy. He knew it wasn´t real back then, but it still felt like it would be the easiest thing in the world to reach out and touch them.

What if the only thing that has changed since then is, that he lost his ability to tell hallucinations and reality apart? What if all of this is just him creating his own reality, because he can´t live in a world where his brother sobbed and screamed for him, but Michael failed him and Gabriel was left to die alone in some stinky alleyway?

And suddenly Michael is sure that Gabriel is dead and lost to him forever and he just went mad, lying alone in the garden, dreaming about the past till the dreams took him over.

And really, how could it be more than a dream, the silly, little dream of someone whose heart, whose entire essence, was finally broken beyond repair? The notion of Raphael standing up to him and saving him is ridiculous, impossible even, but one corner of his heart always yearned for it to happen, the one who wanted Raphael to talk back during the stupid power play, not to get an excuse to push him down further, but as proof that his brother was still in there somewhere; that he hadn´t killed them all.

Then talking to Death, an absolutely insane thing to do, something Michael would think about, but wouldn´t have dared in reality, with the risk of accidentally releasing the horseman and screwing up everything, would he? And of course Death conveniently told him Gabriel was alive, even though the horseman had no reason not to leave him in his grief.

And then surfacing, just to get the message that it was possible to find Gabriel and get to him, to find him beaten up but not lethally wounded, while his captors conveniently killed each other off? Tearful reunion and his brother calming down in his arms, pressing himself close to Michael, just as he did when something upset him as a fledgling?

No way this is reality and Michael has no idea how he ever thought it could be. He can almost feel the grass tickling his back now, the grass in the garden where he is really lying, hallucinating so he doesn´t have to face the fact that he killed all his little brothers, throwing Lucifer into the pit, twisting Raphael beyond recognition, letting little Gabriel get tortured to death.

Those little fledglings playing tag in the grass are all dead and gone because of him.

He carefully strokes Gabriel´s hair, listens to his brother´s heartbeat, checks over the freshly healed wounds again, but somehow no matter how solid Gabriel feels beneath his fingers, he still can´t believe it.

It´s way more easy to believe he has finally fallen _that_ far, that hallucinations and self delusion can be _that_ powerful, than to trust they actually have a shot at something like a happy ending.

Gabriel stirs slightly and Michael holds his breath, the urge to shake his brother awake getting overwhelming. But surely it´s easier to hallucinate his brother unconscious than awake and if his brother is really dead, then he wants to avoid anything that could disturb the illusion.

 _Give me this at last, if you will give me nothing else_ he prays. _Just a little longer, l_ _et me live_ _in a world where I´ve still got a chance._

He smiles down at the memory of his brother, tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

 _Just a little longer, please Father, he looks so peaceful._

And then Gabriel scares the crap out of him, by choosing exactly that moment to crack his eyes open and mutter: "Oh shit, what did I smoke and why did no one stop me?"

For one moment Michael is too overwhelmed to hear his brother talk, to react in any way, but when Gabriel tries to push himself away from him, he instinctively fastens his grip, pulling his brother back against his chest.

"Hey, that´s rude. Listen, I have no idea what I did last night and I´m pretty sure I don´t want to know, since it feels like it involved getting run over by a truck, but I would still very much appreciate if you would just let me…" Gabriel´s voice trails off, the moment he has managed to turn himself around in Michael´s grip and get a look on who is holding him.

"Okay...", he continues, after a moment in which the two brothers just stare at each other, now sounding considerable less confident and more squeaky. "Awkward. Uhm… so it was all real?"

"You tell me", Michael whispers shaky, but pretty sure that if this was his hallucination, Gabriel´s first words after waking up would have been quite different. "You tell me, because I really don´t think I should be trusted on that matter"

"You are asking the guy, who can forget how to dissolve his own time loops, if he gets too caught up in music", Gabriel sighs in response. "But I guess the whole story has enough shitty parts to be real, so let´s just go with it, alright?"

"Yes", Michael hurries to agree. There are still chances of course that this is an hallucination, but if you never get out of it, doesn´t that mean it´s your new reality? Isn´t that the principle on which the heavens work? "Yes of course, this is real, this is all real"

"Glad to have that one solved", Gabriel continues, again trying to get out off his older brothers grip. "But one thing I said before is still standing and that is, you can let me go now... Wait, did you watch me all the time, while I was unconscious? Anyone ever told you that stuff like that is creepy?"

He continuous to prattle on about everything and nothing, leaving Michael slightly stunned and not entirely sure how he feels about this new Gabriel. Somehow he expected his little brother to wake up as the vulnerable fledgling from the night before, but together with his health, Gabriel also seems to have restored some of his walls again. He isn´t exactly snarky and provoking, as he made a point of being, when Michael found him with Kali and later when they talked in the warehouse, but he is definitely trying to talk away his nervousness and is intent not to show any more weaknesses than he already has.

"Seriously Michael, I´m fine, just stop it! I wasn´t drinking after all and you are a pillar I´m chained to or something, are you? I admit that whole idea sounds like the prove I was drinking and I would really like to know what can still knock me out like that, but you know I´ve seen some crazy stuff, the best of it created by myself, not that I want to boast or anything, Kali will never stop laughing if I´m telling this to a pillar… wait, what was my train of thought again?"

"Uhm, not sure there was one", Michael manages, while trying to work out that wreck of a sentence, which hasn´t been made more understandable by the fact, that Gabriel was spitting the words out faster and faster, as if they were burning his tongue.

Gabriel was hyper and hard to follow as a fledgling sometimes, but that was a happy kind of hyper, this is desperate hyper and while Michael didn´t even know that existed a few minutes ago, he already knows he doesn´t like it. It´s like his brother is trying to escape, but can´t flee physically, so he doesn´t know what to do with his adrenalin and just spits out everything he is thinking in real time.

Oh, right, escaping.

"Wait, there actually was one, you wanted me to let you go, I´m just not sure, that´s a good idea in your state."

Gabriel throws a skeptical look at Michael´s arms, wrapped around his torso like screw clamps. "Well, I´m not sure if you breaking my ribs is a good idea either, just saying"

Michael lets go so quickly, that Gabriel looses his balance and can catch himself just in time, to prevent crashing face first into the sand.

It takes five minutes, a flash flood of hasty apologies from Michael, about a hundred assurances from Gabriel that he is fine and has had much worse, really, and finally an intervention from Raphael, who has seen that Gabriel has woken up by now and wants to do another check up on his brother, to get things down to a tolerable level of drama.

"Are you sure he shouldn´t lie down again?", Michael asks nervously, still way more shocked by the little incident than he should be, while Raphael checks over Gabriel.

"Michael" Raphael sounds like he won´t be able to hide his annoyance much longer, which some part of Michael can understand, since he has to admit, he asked that question four times in a row. Still, all the rest of him is absolutely shaken, because he hurt Gabriel again, even if he didn´t really break his ribs, and then let him fall. What kind of brother has so little control of his actions, when he should just fully concentrate on taking care of his wounded little brother?

"It´s his grace I am worried about, if I´m worried about anything. His vessel is completely healed and I dare say he can sit and stand without using his grace"

"Also, you are behaving like you dropped me from a cliff", Gabriel chips in. "I just made a stupid reply and startled you and there is no way I could have hurt myself in that little slip. If you are beating yourself up about this, what will happen if I get seriously hurt again? Will you just die on spot out of self reproach?"

Michael swallows, forcing himself to calm down. Objectively, yes, he is behaving foolish and totally blowing this out of proportion. He is the leader of heaven, damn it, and Gabriel is right, if he gets paralyzed by something so little, there is no way he´ll be able to properly fulfill his job. He is acting ridiculous and that should stop right now.

Still, the pure panic streaming through him, when he lost his grip on Gabriel for just a second, is way to present and burning to hot to dismiss. The panic that returns at the mere thought, that something bad, no matter how little, could happen to Gabriel. It could happen any moment! He could fall. His grace could be fatally damaged after all. The Norse could come back. The Hindu could seek revenge for Kali. Raphael could…

"Michael, look at me!"

It takes him a few seconds to determine what is real and when he finally manages, the haze of panic immediately returns again, because Raphael is kneeling in front of him, which means he isn´t with Gabriel, which means…

"Michael! Michael look at me, oh damn it, Gabriel come here, he won´t calm down without you. Michael, just breathe, Gabriel is here, everything is alright, he won´t get hurt, I promise, we are safe..." "Uhm, yeah, exactly what he says. This really isn´t worth you getting so worked up over it Michael, not at all. If this is my fault for faking my death I´m sorry, but I´m alive, believe me. I´m here and alive, just open your eyes and look at me. I´m here, right here"

Open your eyes? When did he close them? The voices of his brothers wash over his, but don´t seem to touch him, a steady roar in the background, he can only catch clear fragments of now and then, while his heart is jack-hammering in his chest and his vessel is surely dying of suffocation, because he is just unable to get in some air. A hand is pushing into his and Michael grips it as tight as he can, like a drowning man grips a life line and slowly, excruciatingly slowly, he is able to calm down.

When he finally manages to get his eyes open again, Gabriel is kneeling in front of him, holding his hand and Michael immediately feels guilty again, because it´s obvious he gave his little brother quite a scare. "Damn it Michael", Gabriel is saying very softly. "Did you just get a full blown panic attack because of me?"

Michael blinks away tears, he hasn´t been aware of crying. "Can we just go home?", he croaks out. "Please?"

Gabriel says "Sure" almost immediately, but Michael doesn´t miss the flash of fear his brother is quickly trying to hide away. He thinks of how he grabbed for Gabriel´s arm in the warehouse, trying to force his little brother back to heaven and how exactly that action sent Gabriel running, leading to all this mess in the process.

"If you don´t want to, that´s alright too", he blurts out. "I know I messed up heaven and everything, so if you don´t want to go…"

"Of course I want to, don´t be stupid", Gabriel replies a bit too fast to really mean it.

"No, you don´t" Michael is sure of it now. "You are just saying that, because you are afraid I´ll get another fit. Stop it, I´m not so fragile you have to lie to me!"

Gabriel responds with a deep sigh, sitting back heavily on the sand and pressing his palm against his forehead. "If we are doing absolute honesty again… I have no idea, if I want to. It´s… I have wanted to return for so long, believe me, there were nights in Asgard, when I just wanted to screw it all and blunder right in, no matter the consequences. There were nights, I thought if I wouldn´t let my shields down right now, if I couldn´t hear your voice in the next thirty seconds, I would either die of loneliness, or go maniac. Some part of me always wanted to go home and here we are… and it´s just been _so_ long"

He raises his head to look at Michael, eyes brimming with uncertainty. "I _want_ to go home, I really do. And at the same time I´m so scared I won´t fit in anymore, that I would rather be alone for the rest of eternity, give it a try"

And doesn´t Michael just know exactly how that feels? How it hurts, when something you´ve always secretly wished for happens to you, but you just can´t embrace it like normal people do, so you keep trying to search for faults, because there is no way this is reality, there is no way you deserve this, after all that you´ve done, after all the times you have twisted yourself, till you couldn´t stand to look at what you have become anymore. Not daring to hope, because the more you hope, the deeper you can fall.

He wonders if Gabriel also suspects, he is going to wake up any moment. Wonders where Gabriel secretly suspects he really is, what drugs he thinks he is on. Wonders what drugs Gabriel tried during his time as Loki.

Gabriel get up so suddenly, he himself looks surprised, like his body just decided to declare independence, turning his face away from Michael and looking really to bolt, to flee, to run forever.

"I´m sorry", he mumbles, not looking Michael in the eyes. "I just… Can I go talk to Balthazar for a moment? Just to tell him I´m alright. We won´t run away, I promise, just..."

 _It´s just too much right now._

"Of course", Michael answers, even though all his instincts are screaming not to let his brother go. Gabriel throws him a quick look and then Michael remains helplessly frozen to the ground, watching his brother run away again, feeling Gabriel´s helpless restlessness cursing through his veins, the restlessness of someone, who never allowed himself to stay and now every time he opens up just a bit, can´t help but feel like this is the moment to cut all bonds and run, before the other gets too much power over him.

 _I´ll fix everything._

Just another impossible promise Michael gave his little brother. How can he fix Gabriel´s fear that binding himself to something will only end in getting hurt again, especially if he himself is haunted by the same fear? The more you hope, the deeper you can fall, indeed.

"At least he has Balthazar", Raphael remarks behind him and Michael feels restless fury waking in him, as he watches Gabriel and Balthazar together, the younger angel again somehow managing to find just the right words to make Gabriel visibly relax, not afraid to pull him into a hug, being there for Michael´s little brother in a way, Michael is sure now he can never manage again. He wonders what the two of them are talking about, what Gabriel really thinks about all this mess.

"But I don´t want him to have Balthazar!", he snaps at Raphael, knowing that he is sounding selfish and whiny, but also aware that he already flushed all his authority down the toilet anyway. "I want him to have _me_!"

Raphael sighs, sounding just as unhappy as Michael feels. "He just needs time, Michael. You can´t expect everything to just click into place again, after all those years"

"Well, it apparently did with Balthazar", Michael mutters, but his fury has disappeared as fast as it came, leaving only frustration. By some miracle he has gotten Gabriel back, whole and alive, he has been granted exactly what he wished for, but somehow he is still standing in front of ruins and broken glass and if anything, everything is feeling even more messed up and complicated. This is mess that can´t be solved with lists and routines, a deep and unpredictable mess and it is scaring Michael beyond belief.

Where does he even begin to fix his relationship with Gabriel, make Gabriel trust him again? _Should_ Gabriel even trust him, objectively speaking?

And suddenly he remembers a place that almost felt like heaven, but is still earthly enough not to freak Gabriel out. A place that soothed Michael and calmed him down, granting him a few hours of peace when he needed it, a place that even captured him enough, that he wanted to return and making it Gabriel´s eternal resting place, even after the horrifying experience he himself made there, feeling Gabriel getting stabbed over the bond.

Sure, that place has ghosts, but it´s not like heaven hasn´t.

So Michael doesn´t allow himself to overthink this too much, because overthinking in most cases leads to everything getting worse and when Gabriel finally seems like he is as relaxed as currently possible, he steps up to him and Balthazar, saying: "Gabriel, if that´s alright, I´ve got a place I want to show you, before we talk about heaven again. Balthazar, I already let Raphael call all the others, would you please go too?"

Balthazar is starring at him, like he just grew a second head and Michael wants to snap at the younger angel, to tell him what exactly was so strange about what he said, till he realizes he just said "please", when the younger angels are used to nothing but orders from him.

"Okay..." Gabriel is getting up, throwing Balthazar a slightly nervous look and smiling in a way that reminds Michael painfully of his fake grins at the warehouse. "Guess I´ll see you one way or another, Balth. Hold on and don´t annoy Raphael too much, do you hear me?"

"Yeah", Balthazar answers absently, apparently still trying to fit the new behaviors of the archangels in his worldview and falling miserably, but the look he throws Michael is pretty hard to misunderstand, even though he is trying not to make it look too impertinent.

 _You better take care of him._

On another day Michael might have sent Balthazar to reeducation, for trying to give orders to a superior, but today letting him get away with it, seems like the least crazy thing that has happened in the last hours.

 _I will._

It´s a joy to finally, finally leave the beach, where Michael feels like he has spent half his existence. Its a whole other kind of joy to find the meadow again, the one in Switzerland, that still feels like the garden, even now when he has felt the original only recently.

And finally feeling the archangel bond again, really feeling that unique connection that Michael is sure can not be faked, is the biggest joy of it all.

He is frozen for a moment, breathing in the air, letting that feeling of peace that seems to pour out of this place fill him and most importantly of all, feeling Gabriel, his wonder as he takes in his surroundings, his insecurity at being alone with Michael, his fear, his hope and all those emotions that can be felt telepathically, but never given justice by any description.

And Michael can finally admit to himself, how afraid he was that he would never feel that bond again, how even during their flight to the meadow he was afraid that Kali´s block would fall, but the bond just wouldn´t reappear and be lost forever.

 _You know, I could have flown that way on my own_ , Gabriel is telling him over the bond, but it doesn´t feel like a reproach at all, he is just testing their connection and when Michael answers _Better safe than sorry_ he can feel his brother´s relief washing over him.

Sometimes it´s easier to talk, when you don´t feel what the other person feels, especially when you aren´t ready to open up yet and every attempt to cover up your feelings could get misinterpreted faster than you can blink. But sometimes it´s also nice to just feel that the other one is there, really there and alive.

"Didn´t know you knew places like that on earth", Gabriel finally says, after minutes of mentally getting used to each other, both brothers trying to hide their shock at how deep the mental changes in the other went and failing miserably and pushes the bond into the back of his mind, where it normally rests, like a background hum. "Before I left, you barely went to earth at all"

Damn it, Michael forgot how hard to it is to lie with the archangel bond active. With Raphael that wasn´t a problem, since he would feel the lies, but never dare call them out. "I still don´t like earth", Michael confesses "and I became even more of a shut in while you were gone. I found this place just a few days ago, after the warehouse and I… I thought you might like it"

Gabriel looks around again, his eyes sweeping down to the valley, with the river running through it, over the opposite mountain chain, covered in forest and topped by snow even now in summer and returning to the almost unreal green grass they are standing on.

"You know", he says, voice suddenly cracking. "I found a few places like that over the time. You see them and you just feel at home, like Father cut out a piece of the garden and worked it into earth. I used to think of them as some sort of save spaces for us and I got obsessed with them for a while when things looked bleak as Loki. I told myself that Father had created them for me and if I found them all, something special would happen. I don´t even know what I thought would happen, but I was like a little boy collecting football stickers and I just couldn´t stop"

"Oh", Michael mouths, not sure if he is disappointed because he thought this place unique, or lucky, because these places obviously did or do mean something to Gabriel. "And did something happen?"

Gabriel shrugs. "I lost patience after I stopped finding new ones. Told myself the whole thing had been stupid from the beginning and started avoiding them. And seriously, why would Father send me elaborate signs I have to piece together, when he could just talk to me at any given moment?" Michael can see that his brother is trying hard to dismiss the whole idea, but when he looks up, there is a strange glimmer of hope in his eyes. "Still, I never found this one"

"So...this is a sign?", Michael asks, not sure how he would even feel about that. He has prayed to his father for so long, begging and pleading for just a word, a wink, a sign, anything to make sure, that Father hasn´t just forgotten him, anything to chase away his deepest fear that Father never wanted them to be his children and always just saw them as tools, but little Michael still clung onto him, because he simply knew no one else in the world and when he started educating the other angels to cling to Father too, it got too much for him and he left annoyed.

Gabriel doesn´t answer for a moment, then he says slowly: "Well, we could see it as a sign and spent years debating what exactly Father wanted to tell us. We could discuss why he is sending us such a complicated sign to get us back together instead of, oh I don´t know, talk to us maybe. Or we could say that there just happen to be some nice places in the world and spare ourselves the drama"

 _But what if it´s really a sign?_ some part of Michael is screaming. _What if Father cares for us after all and there is a valid explanation why he doesn´t answer our prayers and we just turn away from him? Isn´t that blasphemy? Isn´t that betrayal?_

But really, all illusions and shields aside, is there any valid excuse for an omnipotent being to just forget you? Isn´t there a limit how long you can wait for someone to safe you, when you should have seen centuries ago, that you are the one betrayed?

Michael takes a deep breath. "I´m voting for just-a-nice-place"

And when Gabriel says: "Me too", his smile is real and Michael knows that it´s worth loosing your favorite dream of someone distant, to win someone literally standing right in front of you.

It´s still awkward between them after that, but something has shifted, like the are on the same side in at least some respects. They are lying in the grass, next to each other, not touching, but that isn´t that important anymore now that the bond is active again, or so Michael tells himself.

"Michael, what are you looking for?", Gabriel asks, breaking the half-comfortable silence they have settled into after deciding to screw Father unto further notice.

"I´m not looking at anything", Michael replies, yanking his head around and turning it towards the mountain chain, where Gabriel is looking. He can´t very well tell his little brother, he can´t stop looking for the exact spot, where he wanted to put him… no, the illusion… to rest, just to assure himself there is nothing left of that horrible moment he had to put his brother down, having failed him in the most fundamental way of all.

"Michael, you are behaving like a human, who lost his car keys. Also I know something is wrong, so come on. Aren´t we at absolute honesty again?"

"Are we?", Michael asks absently, his eyes flickering again over the meadow, without any conscious decision to do so.

"Miiiiiiiichael!"

"Stop using that tone, you are not a fledgling!"

"Miiiiiiichael!"

"You wouldn´t like the answer. Not at all"

"Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiichael!"

"Alright", Michael blurts out annoyed. "I wanted to put you to rest here, when I thought you were dead and I´m looking for that spot. There, happy now?"

That succeeds in throwing Gabriel off the rails for a moment at least "You took me to my grave to relax? Wow, that´s actually something no one I heard of ever came up with. I´ll tell you when I´ve decided if that´s sweet or the creepiest thing ever"

"Technically it´s not your grave, since..."

"Not sure if I want to know the details"

"YOU faked your death, if I may remember you"

"I told you I´m sorry!"

"You really think that cuts it?" Michael realizes at this point that this escalated within seconds and that they are both screaming and he really feels bad about it, since arguing with Gabriel is the last thing he wants to do, now he´s finally gotten him back, but somehow he can´t stop himself, when emotions from not so long ago, start whirling up again. "I thought you were DEAD, I held your body in my arms, I almost went insane with grief! Who knows, maybe I did! I know you wanted to get away and I understand it, but that was just… how did you even come up with that sick idea?!"

"Funny", Gabriel gives back, without missing a beat. "Exactly what I thought when I found out what you did to Raphael"

The words hit deep, hurting physically and Michael quickly turns away, although he knows Gabriel will still feel the impact he made over the bond. The meadow suddenly doesn´t feel like a special place anymore or like home or like anything at all. Just another place he has come back to again and again no matter his bad experiences, foolishly hoping he wouldn´t get hurt this time around.

He loves his brother, Michael is absolutely sure of it. He will panic if even the slightest harm happens to Gabriel, he is sure of that too. He would give his life for Gabriel without a second thought.

And at the same time his little brother is driving him crazy and he wants to hit him for faking his death and thinking Michael wouldn´t care, or – and he can´t decide if that´s better or worse - knowing it would destroy Michael and doing it anyway.

"But it´s a nice place for a grave, I have to give you that" Gabriel breaks the silence carefully, sounding like he just wants to ignore the issues that just came up and because Michael is a coward, he lets his brother get away with that. "Anything else you wanted to show me here?"

Michael forces himself to turn around. Well, Gabriel is still here, he didn´t run. That´s already something, isn´t it?

"The mountain chain", he answers, like their argument never took place. "What do you think it looks like?"

"Is that a trick question?", Gabriel is sounding wary, even thought he was the one trying to change the topic earlier.

"No, it´s not! Just...remember how you used to see things in the clouds, where I couldn´t see anything? Just humor me"

Gabriel shrugs, then concentrates on the mountain chain, twisting his head slightly and completely sinking into the nonsense task, as he used to do as a fledgling and Michael would have to lie to say, he doesn´t love to watch his brother so completely absorbed in something so abstract.

"Camel", Gabriel announces after only ten seconds of intense staring. "Playing G-rated it´s definitely a camel"

"I´m not seeing anything", Michael confesses, trying hard to ignore Gabriel´s comment about G-rating. "Where is that camel?"

"Seriously?" And now Michael has achieved what he wanted, because his little brother sounds exactly like he did, when they watched clouds in the garden and he got frustrated by his oldest brother´s complete ignorance towards forms and patterns. Michael would never admit it, but there were few things he loved more, than letting Gabriel show him the world in his bright light. "Look, there´s the head. Come on, Michael, see that ring of trees. It´s even got an eye!"

"If that´s the head, it has also got six legs", Michael remarks. "And the eye is too round and not in the right place"

Gabriel sighs in half played despair. "Michael, do you seriously have the imagination of a brick wall, or do you just want to hear me talk?"

"What about both?", Michael suggests and then Gabriel throws a handful of grass at him and then they spent the next few hours watching clouds and arguing over the forms, like they used to do, back in the old days without worries.

And after a time it´s as if Lucifer´s rebellion and everything that followed never happened and it´s really just a regular day of arguing over nonsense, because there is nothing else to worry about. And when Gabriel curls into his big brother, like he always did on those precious days when it was just the two of them and Michael offered him all the love he wanted, Michael finally dares to believe, that despite everything that stands between them, they still have a shot. That he can still bring his brother home.

And even more surprisingly, he realized as the stars come out, he isn´t even in a hurry to do it. In this moment, with Gabriel curled against him, the valley beneath them and no other living being for miles, he feels as safe and at home as he ever did in heaven.


	22. Epilogue

"Gabriel?", his oldest brother whispers into his ear and the youngest archangel turns around, not quite ready to slip out of the comfortable, trance-like state he has fallen into, blinking at Michael like a half asleep owl.

"Mhm?"

Michael scoffs in response and Gabriel already knows what his brother is going to say now. _Use_ f _ull sentences, Gabriel. You are an archangel,_ _so_ _talk like one._

As a fledgling Gabriel hated that particular scolding and always to correct himself before Michael had a chance of saying it, which probably was what his older brother intended with it. He could do it now, but he chooses not to, leaning back into his brother´s arms and grinning at him, daring him.

And Michael grins back. "Use full sentences, Gabriel. You are an archangel, so talk like one"

And with a warm, fuzzy feeling spreading in his stomach, Gabriel knows that little moments like this one are the reason why he hasn´t run away from Michael, like all his instincts have screamed at him to do. Why he is still able to relax in his arms and feel only slightly guilty for it, which he would have thought impossible, considering what Michael did to Raphael, Balthazar and heaven in general.

Of course he hasn´t forgotten anything he has heard about his older brother in the last few days and he hates the cold Michael he has gotten to know at Kali´s. He also absolutely hates and is scared of the Michael, Raphael and Balthazar have gotten to know.

But in little moments like this, Gabriel feels like he is getting a glimpse behind some heavily guarded wall and is sure that there is still _his_ Michael behind it somewhere, the Michael who was his awesome big brother and the most reliable person in the world, always a bit stiff and unimaginative, but that made it even more endearing when he went out of his way time and time again to make sure that Gabriel knew his big brother loved him with all his heart.

This is the Michael Gabriel is seeing now, grinning about a scolding that has somehow turned into an inside joke over time, the one he hopes will stay, no, has to believe will stay for him. And if the Michael from the garden is still alive in some way, then maybe, just maybe there is still an innocent fledgling waiting somewhere deep inside Gabriel, the one Loki and the Trickster have tried their damnedest to kill.

He has pronounced that part of himself weak, the moment he ran from heaven, something that was just slowing him down and couldn´t possibly survive in the harsh world he was entering now, quite fittingly led by Death. He has tried for millenniums to eradicate that naive, little fledgling, to look back now and wish he could have that joyful innocence again.

For one strange moment he wonders if Michael could take away all his memories from Loki and the Trickster, everything after Lucifer´s rebellion, which probably would be the only way to get that fledgling back. Then he realizes that Michael would probably do it, if he thought it would safe his little brother some pain and then he suddenly thinks about Balthazar´s empty eyes, when the younger angel told him about what Michael called reeducation, about how much Balthazar and Raphael suffer from their missing memories and then he has to turn away from Michael, burning with shame about even thinking of that cowards approach towards his past.

"Gabriel?" Michael´s hand is on his shoulder, worry clear in his voice and radiating over the bond Gabriel is having some difficulties getting used to again. He has to constantly remind himself to keep the shields down for his brothers, guarding himself having become more natural then just letting the bond flow like it was always supposed to. "What are you thinking about? I know it is upsetting you"

"Just the craziness of the whole situation", Gabriel lies, with the ease and the grin of the Trickster. "I mean, two days ago I wouldn´t have ever thought this possible"

"Well, you were not the only one", Michael murmurs, drifting into his own thoughts about the situation, as Gabriel was sure he would, leaving the younger archangel slightly shaken.

He always knew he was good at lying and had ample opportunity to practice during the last centuries, but lying to Michael´s face with the two of them only inches apart and the bond active and Michael not suspecting a thing?

He is not sure if he should be proud or freaked out. Michael was always able to read him like a book and this little incident makes him feel strangely disappointed in his brother.

Glaring at Michael, he sees the oldest archangel still hasn´t quite found back to reality from the mess of feelings Gabriel deliberately pushed him into and that sight succeeds in actually sending Gabriel into thoughts of his own, about how crazy the whole situation is.

About three days ago, he wanted nothing more than kill Michael.

Less than two days ago, he was kneeling in front of the Norse, frightened in a way he had never fathomed before, absolutely sure he was going to die a horrible, fiery death and Balthazar would have to watch.

He quickly tries to steer away from the memories of these endless moments of pure terror, but now they are joined by the memories of what Frigga did to him afterwards and he can almost feel the angel blade cutting into him again, no he _can_ feel it again, deliriously watching his grace seeping from his wounds, blue and red mingling on the sand…

"Gabriel, snap out of it! You are safe, I promise you are safe! Gabriel, come back to me, Gabriel please!"

Michael sounds way too scared out of his mind himself to be reassuring, but somehow his voice however panicked is just what Gabriel needs to snap back to reality.

"What?", he wheezes, unable to stop his sudden shaking and clinging to Michael harder than his pride would usually allow. "I´m getting a panic attack, so you´re getting a panic attack, about me getting a panic attack? How did we end up being such a mess? This isn´t even funny"

Michael draws in a shaky breath and starts systematically messing up Gabriel´s hair and just as systematically cutting off the flood of emotions he is sending over the bond, quickly forcing himself to regain his bearings to put his little brother first and said little brother isn´t sure if he thinks that sweet or sad.

"I don´t know about you", Michael says, with just a slight hint of bitterness in his voice", but I am pretty sure fun wasn´t on the list of Father´s top priorities, when he planned our lives"

"And I´m pretty sure if I would have said that, _someone_ would have labeled it blasphemy",Gabriel responds, cherishing the half-smile his comment gets out of Michael. In his opinion, Michael has always clung to fanatically to Father, taking the sense of duty and devotion all angels felt toward the creator to a whole new level. The absolute peak of Michael´s desperate obsession to please Father was reached, when throwing Lucifer into the pit and so Gabriel is glad to see that Michael is getting a bit more relaxed around the never easy topic of Father and blasphemy.

"So, what did you want when you first called me?", Gabriel asks to get his little breakdown out of both their minds. "Or were you just checking if I was still alive?"

Michael blinks at him, obviously trying to remember, but not quite managing to concentrate on something that seems ridiculously long ago now. "I think I wanted to ask you if you were ready to go back to heaven", he finally says. "But it´s alright if you are not feeling like it now, I wanted to choose a good moment to ask, but then you got upset and we got distracted and you..."

Michael is talking himself into every available corner again, as he tends to do when he gets nervous, but Gabriel has stopped listening the moment he heard the word "heaven" anyway, a word that has never failed to bring him to a halt during all of his chosen exile, letting him drown in a strange mixture of fear and longing.

When he thought of heaven in the past, he thought of shelter, of this feeling of being wanted and at home you always take for granted, till it gets ripped away from you. He thought of Michael´s embraces, Lucifer´s breathless laughter, Raphael´s reassuring smiles, the little ones endless, unbound energy and then he thought about how it was all lost to him forever and then he suddenly hated heaven for teaching him hope, when the real world had no place for silly feelings like that.

But now it turns out he has actually a chance to get at least some of it back and he is frustrated with himself, how hard he is instinctively trying to push the chance away, how frightened he is of returning to a place that can´t possibly still be the one he is really longing for.

He wants to go home so hard it´s burning him inside out, but he keeps finding new reasons why going back is a horrible idea.

He will be under Michael´s control and what is the cold Michael he hates returns?

He will be disappointed by it anyway, since he spent centuries idealizing it.

He is just not ready for it.

Only that he´ll never be ready, as he suddenly realizes now. He´ll never be ready and with each second he is sitting around, putting going back off and off a bit longer, he is getting less ready. He is overthinking all of this, searching for problems everywhere, because returning to heaven always was his secret wish and he finds out for a fact that the ideal heaven in his mind, will now rest a dream forever, he won´t be able to handle the loss.

Actually, this is a moment shouting for the Trickster. The Trickster would just get going, saunter in and take a look. But he doesn´t want to see heaven through the eyes of the Trickster, when he sees it for the first time since Lucifer´s rebellion, so Gabriel somehow has to muster the same kind of spontaneity to finally get home-.

Which isn´t as easy as it sounds, because Gabriel cares how this day is going to end, while the whole point of the Trickster is that he doesn´t care about anything.

Alright, getting up in three, two,…

He rises as quickly as he can, loosing patience with his self set countdown. He doesn´t have the time now he has set the goal, at zero his little drop of determination and braveness would have evaporated already.

"Let´s go", he interrupts Michael, whose guilt filled rambling has turned into an indistinguishable roar in Gabriel´s ears. "Now, before I lose my nerves and run away instead"

Michael looks absolutely struck and the moment he takes to react, feels like centuries to Gabriel, now that he is intent on going through with this and adrenalin is rushing through him, like he about to enter a fight. Thankfully Michael doesn´t comment on Gabriel´s sudden change of mind at all, probably as afraid that it won´t last long as Gabriel himself is, grabbing his little brother´s arm and…

"No, no way you are carrying me! This isn´t our freaking wedding!", Gabriel shouts at him, the tension of the situation making his voice way louder and harsher than intended.

"Alright" Michael looks like Gabriel just stabbed him in the chest, but he is quickly trying to hide his feelings, making Gabriel feel even more guilty about loosing it for a second. "But at least let me steer, to make sure we land somewhere nice, you know"

"Whatever", Gabriel mumbles still feeling guilty, letting Michael take his hand. He feels like he won´t be able to stand still one second longer, his urge to just run away and hide growing larger with every second.

"Ready?", Michael asks and Gabriel almost shouts at him again for wasting further time when Gabriel´s nerves are being shredded by a wood chopper, but the bond tells him that his big brother also is beyond frightened and when Michael is scared he tends to cling to predictable things. Like lists or routines, or questions that only have one socially acceptable answer, even when your mind is screaming to say the opposite.

"Yes", Gabriel lies to Michael´s benefit and then he closes his eyes, trusting his big brother to bring him home and trying not to feel, like he just stepped off a cliff.

The flight seems to take up ages and last no time at all. Suddenly there is grass under his feet again and then _that_ feeling hits him, the one that only the garden can give him, the feeling he has searched for in Asgard and in his goose chase for the sacred spots, that feeling telling you, you are home, really home and nothing can harm you anymore.

He has sworn himself after he ran away, to always remember how it felt like, safety and peace pulsing through him in a way not even the archangel bond could challenge, like the garden itself was some giant telepathic being, connected to the angels and there to help them back to their feet every time they fell.

Well, trying to remember he definitely failed miserably. It´s like his whole being just got taken over, but in a way so gentle and lulling, he doesn´t even care those feelings aren´t his. They are now. He is safe. The garden is welcoming him home, he is safe.

It´s absolutely overwhelming and he stumbles, would have fallen without Michael´s grip on him, because it´s just impossibly to take in.

He is safe.

He is home.

He didn´t even remember than concept anymore.

He tries to regain his bearings again, to make opening his eyes and seeing the garden for the first time in millenniums some big and ceremonial moment, but the lulling safety of the garden and his grief at having missed out on this for so long are clashing so hard, he isn´t even able to stand on his own, let alone make a show out of this.

So he opens his eyes, while hanging in Michael´s grip and is immediately glad he hasn´t tried to stand on his own, because he is absolutely blown anyway by how everything is exactly as he remembers. Every tree and every flower is at his place, the rushing of the waterfall is exactly where it should be and this all has to be a dream, because there is just no way the garden can be so perfect after all this time.

"So, how is it?", Michael asks, hope and worry laced tight in his voice and Gabriel almost breaks into laughter, because there are just no words in all of creation to describe the mixture of feelings rushing through him right now.

"How is it?", he echoes numbly, because his emotions can´t possibly be expressed by his voice anymore. "How is it?"

His vision is starting to blur rapidly, but when he turns and smiles at his brother it isn´t the smug Trickster grin or the wicked Loki smile, but the wide, almost forgotten smile of an innocent, little archangel.

"Michael, I´m home"

 **So, that was the longest think I have ever written and I´m really excited about having pulled through to the end. Thanks to everyone who read, reviewed, followed or favorited. You are all fantastic :)**

 **Special thanks to Sekkiera, the most loyal reviewer on the planet, writing me about every! single! chapter! Thanks doesn´t quite cut it for you and neither does fantastic. You are brilliant and kept me going through all of this, always encouraging me with your messages. I know stories are usually being dedicated at the beginning, but anyway I would like to dedicate it to you now. There you go, you deserve it :)**


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